by Timothy Robson
American tenor Nicholas Phan led members of Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire in a stunning live performance of Phan’s English Baroque lute song album, A Painted Tale, this weekend at several local venues, including St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday night. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Nicholas Phan will certainly be no stranger to Northeast Ohio when he arrives to guest direct and perform in Apollo’s Fire’s next production. The versatile tenor has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in Orff’s Carmina Burana in 2013, and in Bach’s B-minor Mass in 2014. In his previous engagements with Apollo’s Fire in 2016, he covered both the Evangelist and the tenor solos in Bach’s St. John Passion. He got off a bit easier in the Cleveland Orchestra’s St. John last March, only singing the role of the Evangelist. And in between those gigs, Phan stepped in for John Relyea on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series in February, 2016.
This time around, Phan will be performing a program adapted from A Painted Tale, a 2015 recording of Elizabethan lute songs in which he collaborated with lutenist Michael Leopold and gambist Ann Marie Morgan. The album takes its name from the Thomas Morley piece that introduces it, and Phan wrote in a preview that “The songs are structured so that when one listens to them in order, they tell the story of a young man who falls passionately in love for a woman and who is ultimately destroyed by the fire of that passion.” [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
At its premiere in 1739, Handel’s Biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt was almost entirely made up of choruses. Even in the composer’s revision, minus the opening lament and with Italian arias added, the work is probably more rewarding to sing than to listen to. Enter Jeannette Sorrell, who decided to restore part of the introduction that Handel lopped off, and to bring the rest of the piece down to under two hours in length. Her version made a fine impression on Friday evening, when Sorrell led Apollo’s Fire, Apollo’s Singers, and five extraordinary soloists in a leaner Israel in Egypt at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Apollo’s Fire crowned its 25th anniversary season over the summer with sold-out performances at Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Cain Park. I reached Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell to ask what’s ahead for Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra in 2017-2018.
Daniel Hathaway: You’ve planned some big works to begin and end your new season — Handel’s Israel in Egypt in the fall, and Monteverdi’s Orfeo in the Spring. I understand that you’ve created a special version of Handel’s famous, double-chorus oratorio for the October 12-15 performances in Northeast Ohio.
Jeannette Sorrell: I’ve always felt that Israel in Egypt is a great work, but performances I’ve heard didn’t always work for me. The original piece was in three parts, beginning with the “Lamentation on the Death of Jeremiah” and continuing with “Exodus” and “The Song of Moses.” Audiences today usually only hear the second and third parts, but the “Lamentation” contains some beautiful, poignant funeral music.
Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, is looking for a Development Manager. Key responsibilities include managing the Annual Fund and special events, in addition to playing a vital role in donor relations. The Development Manager will report to the General Manager and serve as a liaison with committees of the Board. This position requires refined interpersonal skills and effective leadership. Click here to download a full job description.
by Robert Rollin
Apollo’s Fire performed an outstanding early music concert at Cleveland Heights’ Cain Park Amphitheater last Saturday night, July 29. Outside the venue, wine tastings, accompanied vocals, and a lively barbershop quartet set a relaxed mood. The core of the program was the ensemble’s performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s complete The Four Seasons, with the four separate concerti spread throughout the evening. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
This summer, Apollo’s Fire audiences have had the opportunity to hear violinist Susanna Perry Gilmore explore two dimensions of her musical persona that aren’t part of her day job as concertmaster of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra — and which Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra are largely responsible for developing.
Perry Gilmore appeared as a folk fiddler in “Mediterranean Roots” during the month of June, then turned to Baroque violin as soloist in the “Summer” concerto of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The Vivaldi program was presented twice earlier this month in Northeast Ohio before going on tour to Youngstown and the Tanglewood, Gretna, and Ravinia Festivals. The show returns for two final performances at Cain Park and Laurel School’s Butler Campus on July 29 and 30.
How did the violinist originally become involved with Apollo’s Fire? “It was a serendipitous meeting,” Perry Gilmore said in a telephone conversation, explaining that Sorrell had made a guest appearance with the Omaha Symphony in the spring of 2014 in an all-Vivaldi program. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
For its annual plunge into the non-Baroque, Apollo’s Fire took its early summer audiences on a cultural excursion around the Mediterranean, a journey resembling the travels of Ziryab, a 9th-century African troubadour who was the Johann Gottlieb Goldberg of his era, the favorite oud player for the insomniac kalif of Baghdad.
Ziryab’s musical skills launched his wanderings — he was kicked out of the palace by its jealous regular minstrel — as well as inspiring co-curators Amanda Powell and Brian Kay to gather fifteen songs and dances from Medieval and Renaissance Spain, Cyprus, Italy, and Greece into an engaging program. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
To cap off its 25th anniversary season, Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, made a big leap across historical and stylistic boundaries into the early Romantic music of Beethoven. In the second of four performances on Friday evening, April 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sorrell fielded an orchestra of 49 players (huge by AF standards) and joined forces with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley (making his period instrument debut) to lead a spirited foray into music premiered in the first decade of the 19th century. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Historical performance groups have revitalized Baroque music by performing 17th- and 18th-century works on the instruments for which they were written. More recently, a number of those ensembles have made forays into the classical world of Haydn and Mozart and the early Romantic era of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, expanding their musical rhetoric and stretching the capabilities of their instruments.
Now add Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire to that list. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will conclude their 25th-anniversary season with “Beethoven and Schubert Rediscovered,” a festival that includes four Beethoven concerts, a “Schubertiade,” a dance workshop, and lectures and panel discussions.
The Beethoven programs, which run from April 26-29, will feature Berlin Philharmonic first concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley performing the Violin Concerto. The program includes the Egmont Overture and the Fifth Symphony.