Sulayman, Sorrell & Apollo’s Fire win Grammy for Songs of Orpheus

February 12, 2019 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire was among the Grammy winners for classical music announced in Los Angeles on February 10. The award in the Best Solo Vocal Album category was given for the ensemble’s Avie recording, Songs of Orpheus, featuring tenor Karim Sulayman. Conductor Jeannette Sorrell led an ensemble that included Julie Andrijeski, Johanna Novom, Karina Schmitz, René Schiffer, Rebecca Landell Reed, William Simms, and Brian Kay.

The album, which features 17th-century songs on the Orpheus legend by Monteverdi, Caccini, Landi, and d’India, as well as instrumental music by Castello and Cima, was produced by Erica Brenner, recorded by Ian Dobie, and mixed and mastered by Daniel Shores.

Click here to watch a view-from-the-audience video of the exciting moment when Apollo’s Fire’s first Grammy award was announced on Sunday. Songs of Orpheus can be ordered directly from Apollo’s Fire’s website.

It happens that Sorrell, Novom, Schiffer, Schmitz, and Landell Reed are all Oberlin Conservatory graduates — and a number of other “Obies” were honored at the Grammys this time around as well. Read about them here.

Published on ClevelandClassical.com February 11, 2019.

Click here for a printable copy of this article

Return to the Front Page.

About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

Singers’ Club of Cleveland: To Dwell in Harmony (Dec. 9)

by Kevin McLaughlin

The Singers’ Club of Cleveland brought the joy of the season to Trinity Cathedral on Tuesday evening with a program titled To Dwell in Harmony, a holiday offering both polished and good-humored. The venerable all-male chorus — whose lineage stretches back to 1891 and includes collaborations with conductors from Beryl Rubinstein to Robert Shaw — now finds itself under new leadership.

Christopher Clark, appointed in August as Artistic Director (while serving concurrently as Director of Choirs at Case Western Reserve University), led his first Singers’ Club concert with easy command. The chorus appeared to trust him from the first downbeat, and the audience received him just as warmly.

Trinity Cathedral, whose acoustics can flatter or expose a chorus in equal measure, proved an asset. The evening opened with one of its most effective moments: Veni, Veni Emmanuel in John Englert’s arrangement. Clark placed the choir on three sides of the audience, creating a surround-sound of chant that was silky and assured — a confident beginning. [Read on…]

Les Délices welcomes the festive season with “Noel, Noel” (Dec. 7)

by Stephanie Manning

Once December kicks in, an almost overwhelming number of holiday programs pop up around Northeast Ohio. But Les Délices’ offering should draw your attention.

While other festive concerts may create the atmosphere of a bustling party by the fireplace, “Noel, Noel” is like observing a snowy evening from the warmth of the indoors. This is music best enjoyed in quiet contentment, and especially live — so it’s no surprise that the early music ensemble brought back this signature program for three performances this month.

On December 7 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, the six-member group presented a lovely ninety-minute program, which is also available on CD and via streaming until the end of the year. [Read on…]

Cleveland Chamber Choir: In Four Voices (Dec. 3)

by Kevin McLaughlin

Renaissance polyphony can bloom in resonant spaces, but the Donna and James Reid Gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art presents particular challenges: hard surfaces and a long reverb tend to blur consonants into watercolor. The Cleveland Chamber Choir’s four-voice ensemble met those conditions head-on during its “In Four Voices” program on December 3. What emerged was an evening of consistently beautiful vocal timbre shaped by a group navigating the sonic characteristics of the room.

The concert, to be followed in January and March by appearances of various-sized ensembles, is part of a new development for the Cleveland Chamber Choir, called the Camerata Series — more information here.

To improve their chances of hearing one another, the quartet — soprano Lauren Vanden Broeck, mezzo-soprano Kira McGirr, tenor Joel Kincannon, and bass Dominic Aragon — stood in a traditional “part book” formation, like a diamond, facing inward. This meant that their sound was directed toward each other, rather than outward to the listeners around them. [Read on…]

See all reviews

About Daniel Hathaway

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us