As part of the QuVee Mock Masterclass Series at the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, we are delighted to welcome early-music specialist, performer, educator, artistic director, and entrepreneur, Debra Nagy. Nagy will be on campus March 3 and 4 for a short residency, working with K-State’s early-music ensembles, historical performance practice students, and Dr. Alyssa Morris’s oboe studio.
Debra Nagy (debranagy.com) has been called a “musical polymath” (San Francisco Classical Voice) for her accomplished performances as a singer and historical wind player. As founder and Artistic Director of Cleveland-based ensemble Les Délices, she has acquired a reputation for creating concert experiences that “can’t help but getting one listening and thinking in fresh ways”(San Francisco Classical Voice), and she plays principal oboe with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society, Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire, the Boston Early Music Festival, and other ensembles around the country.
Recent creative initiatives with Les Délices have included a three-year commissioning project expanding the repertoire of mythological cantatas, Vivaldi’s Seasons reimagined to include Baroque woodwinds, multimedia productions of Machaut’s medieval masterpiece Remede de Fortune, an acclaimed CD combining jazz and French Baroque airs called Songs without Words, and The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera with puppetry and projections based on Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale.
In addition to recording over 40 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800, Debra was awarded a 2022 Cleveland Arts Prize (Mid-Career Artist) and honored with the 2022 Laurette Goldberg Prize from Early Music America for her work on Les Délices’ acclaimed web series and podcast SalonEra.
Her latest CD with Les Délices features soprano Hannah De Priest in works by Rameau, Handel, Bourgeois, and Lefebvre (released by Avie Records in March 2026). When not rehearsing, performing, or dreaming up new projects, Debra can be found cooking up a storm in her kitchen or commuting by bike from her home in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood.