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Apollo’s Fire: Resilience, filmed at First Baptist, Oct. 20

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by Daniel Hathaway

After the novel coronavirus brought live concerts to a standstill in March, Apollo’s Fire was among the first of Cleveland’s performing organizations to formulate a clear plan for 2020-2021. Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra proposed a hybrid subscription season that would permit in-person audiences at its various venues — at 15% of capacity — but alternatively, promised professionally-produced videos for viewing by subscribers about a week after the live performances.

The first such video, capturing the October 20 performance of Resilience at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, delivered handsomely on that promise. Erica Brenner’s sensitive videography and audio mixing preserved brilliant performances of music that illuminated two troubled periods in history: the plague of London in 1665, and the outbreaks of cholera and dysentery that dampened but failed to defeat the human spirit at the end of the American Civil War two centuries later. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “O Jerusalem!” at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Mar. 11)

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by Timothy Robson

Jerusalem, sacred city of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The location of horrific violence and oppression for over two millennia. But yet a magical city in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived and interacted with each other in harmony. It was the latter aspect of Jerusalem that Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire highlighted in their sensational program “O Jerusalem! Crossroads of Three Faiths.” I heard the performance on Wednesday, March 11 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Gartner Auditorium was well filled, and it now turns out that Apollo’s Fire gave the last major performance at the Museum for an unknown period of time, due to precautions around COVID-19. [Read more…]

fp Creative: “Samples” at Snap House Studios (Feb. 20)

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by David Kulma

fp Creative is making a slow revolution in how concerts happen. By handing over the reins of each event to guest producers/curators, the organization is empowering musicians to experiment with any facet of how music is presented in their post-industrial venue Snap House Studios. On Thursday, February 20, soprano Melanie Emig was in control for an event titled “Samples,” a fascinating shuffle of vocal music ranging from Hildegard’s elaborate Medieval chant to current alt hip-hop. [Read more…]

fp Creative: Melanie Emig’s surround-sound gallery of music

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Imagine the thrill of sampling ice cream without being a burden on the person scooping it, and without the sighs of people in line behind you. Now switch out the flavors for different types of music performed by area vocalists, and you have a good idea of the next concert from fp Creative.

“Samples” is in fact the name of the show at Snap House Studios on Thursday, February 20. Designed by guest producer Melanie Emig, the program ranges from Medieval music to hip hop, R&B, folk, global music, blues, soul, contemporary classical, and guided listening — each short performance coming from a different spot around the edges of the room, as the audience sits in the center and takes it all in.

The evening’s vocalists include Elena Mullins, Case Bargé, Amanda Powell, Liz Bullock, Rayna, Seyu, Naomi Columna, and Emig herself. Also featured is theorbist Jeremy Bass. Doors open at 7:00 pm, music begins at 7:45, and tickets between $0-15 are available onsite.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Echoes of Venice” at Trinity Cathedral (Oct. 18)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The special, spatial music of the Gabrielis and their early Baroque successors at San Marco in Venice has been famous for a long time. But until modern performers took up and mastered the instruments and playing style of the mixed wind and string ensembles that held forth from the galleries of that Byzantine basilica, replicating the timbres of 17th-century polychoral music that drew Northern composers like Heinrich Schütz to the Most Serene Republic just wasn’t possible. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire & The Early Folk Band bring old ballads to life in Avon Lake (June 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts usually draw on folk music that has travelled from the Old World to the New, but this year’s program delved deeper into musical emigration. Three Clevelanders were joined by three members of Europe’s The Early Folk Band in an engaging concert of ballads that have both been frozen in place by literary collectors and constantly altered through the oral tradition in the British Isles and North America. Like some members of Apollo’s Fire, the musicians of The Early Folk Band play pre-1800s music on period instruments but also have a parallel interest in folk music, and seek to bridge the gap between two genres that already have much in common. [Read more…]

Early Folk Band musicians to join Apollo’s Fire in “Far Beyond the Sea”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts will feature a new trans-Atlantic collaboration this month. Ian Harrison, Gesine Bänfer, and Steven Player of Europe’s The Early Folk Band will join Clevelanders Amanda Powell, Tina Bergmann, and Brian Kay in five performances of “Far Beyond the Sea” from June 6 through 10. This genre-crossing project involving old world ballads has been contemplated for some time but is just now coming to fruition.

“Jeannette Sorrell is one of our greatest fans, and we’ve been trying to get this sort of thing together for six or seven years,” Harrison and Bänfer said in a tag-team Skype conversation from Freiburg, Germany. “Either we weren’t free or they weren’t free, or we couldn’t decide how to do it, but we’re very happy that it’s now working.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Bach’s B-Minor Mass at St. Raphael, Bay Village (Apr. 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In the third of four back-to-back performances of J.S. Bach’s “Great Catholic Mass” on Sunday afternoon, April 14 in St. Raphael Church in Bay Village, the musicians of Apollo’s Fire showed no signs of fatigue despite heavy physical and musical demands. Led by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, soloists, chorus, and instrumentalists gave uniformly brilliant performances of a musical monument that the composer was only able to hear in bits and pieces during his lifetime. [Read more…]

Looking for a Valentine’s Day concert? Perhaps we can help you

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s Valentine’s Day all week this week, and aside from the obvious gifts — flowers, chocolates, and shiny bling — there are a number of ways to take to heart the new advice of gifting your love interest experiences rather than things.

Our Concert Listings have been providing such a service since the website was launched in 2008. Consider this message from one of our readers way back in 2009:

I’m grateful for ClevelandClassical.com for so many reasons. In fact, I learned about Nathan Gunn’s performance at Oberlin through you, which has now become the central feature of my surprise Valentine’s Day date with my fiancée! I owe you big time now.

Here are some suggestions for your own Valentine.

[Read more…]

CD Review — Apollo’s Fire: Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain

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by Hannah Schoepe

December evokes fantasies of snug fires, family festivities, and winter wonderlands. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra Apollo’s Fire provides a fitting soundtrack to these daydreams, in their new album Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain. The tracks portray sounds of Christmas from the Irish hillsides to the Appalachian Mountains. Light a candle, and put your dancing shoes on, because this album traverses songs of community, faith, and history, as well as barn dances and Scottish reels.

[Read more…]

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