by Daniel Hathaway
Benjamin Bagby is so consummate a raconteur that he could probably tell you a joke in Anglo-Saxon — with the help of a few facial expressions and gestures — and you’d know exactly when to laugh. Presented by Apollo’s Fire, Bagby brought all his storytelling skills into play at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday evening, November 13 to bring the first third of the Old English epic poem Beowulf vividly to life. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Like many of us, Benjamin Bagby first encountered the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf during junior high school. A few years later, Bagby became fixated with the sound of medieval music. And as he writes on his website, “The Anglo-Saxons would say that this was simply my wyrd (personal destiny).” This weekend, Apollo’s Fire will present three performances of Beowulf performed by singer/storyteller and medieval harpist Benjamin Bagby, beginning on Friday, November 13 at 8:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. See our concert listings page for additional times and locations.
“Humankind has always been fascinated with tales of man over monster,” Bagby said during a telephone conversation from his home in Paris. “It’s an archetypical story that still fascinates us today.” The fact that a new Star Wars film is about to be released supports Bagby’s thoughts. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Venice, always on the verge of sinking into the Adriatic, rose well above sea level on Friday evening at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights as Apollo’s Fire began its 24th season with “Splendor of Venice: An Orchestral Extravaganza.” Following a parade by the musicians up the center aisle heralded by natural horns on either side of the stage, founder and conductor Jeannette Sorrell announced in her opening remarks that she would play the role of Rick Steves that night, taking the audience on a musical tour of 18th-century Venice. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
French-born bassoonist Marc Vallon will be one of the featured soloists during Apollo’s Fire’s first set of concerts this season. “Splendor of Venice: An Orchestral Extravaganza,” which runs from October 15-18 at venues in Fairlawn, Cleveland Heights, and Rocky River, will highlight solo and multiple instrument concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco.
Marc Vallon serves on the music faculty of the University of Wisconsin and plays in the Wingra Woodwind Quintet, an ensemble in residence at the School of Music. We reached him by telephone in Madison to talk about his career and his upcoming appearance with Apollo’s Fire. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Following a series of sold-out concerts at Tanglewood and in England (London and Aldeburgh) and Italy, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire is busy putting the finishing touches on the eight programs they are planning around the area this season. We reached founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell to chat about last summer’s experiences and her plans for the season to come.
I began by asking about Apollo’s Fire’s debut at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. “It was really fun,” Sorrell said. “We had no idea that we were going to be sold out at Tanglewood. It was really a personal homecoming because I had studied in the conducting class there back in 1989 and I have such moving memories of that summer working with Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington. [Read more…]
by Jane Berkner
Apollo’s Fire regaled the audience with a musically satisfying and well-played concert on June 29 at First United Methodist Church in Akron. One of its gala send-off concerts planned for this summer, the group played the same program at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts at the end of the week. The concert opened with selections from Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite, a musical portrayal of Cervantes’ novel. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When you live in a climate like Cleveland’s (or Leipzig’s, for that matter), at the first sign of moderating weather, you want to take your activities out-of-doors — rain, bugs, wind and humidity be damned. In Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach led summer concerts in Zimmermann’s Kaffegarten. In Hunting Valley last week, Jeannette Sorrell led two concerts in the “Baroque Music Barn” at the intersection of Shaker Boulevard and Chagrin River Road. On those occasions, the building formerly used to store apples rang out with the music of Bach and Telemann, including a thorny trio sonata, a requiem for a canary, and a virtuoso concerto. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When summer arrives, Apollo’s Fire lets its hair down and goes off to visit Baroque music’s country cousin — the music of Appalachian America. The ensemble’s previous show, “Come to the River,” now has a prequel: “Sugarloaf Mountain,” an equally irresistible collection of tunes from the old and new worlds chronicling the passage of immigrants from the British Isles to their new homes in the American south — in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain. [Read more…]
by Nicholas Jones
The challenge for any group that takes on The Four Seasons is to “make it new,” as the poet Ezra Pound enjoined his fellow modernists. Performed and recorded time and again, Vivaldi’s most famous pieces are in perpetual danger of being played (and heard) as baroque elevator music. Apollo’s Fire, with soloist Olivier Brault, met the challenge head-on in a dramatic, fresh interpretation of these Venetian masterpieces. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Italian baroque music is immensely popular not only with modern audiences but also with advertising firms looking for energizing music to help sell cars. And there’s nothing more popular in that repertoire than Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. This week, Apollo’s Fire will launch a six-concert series called “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons rediscovered,” featuring its concertmaster, Montréal-based violinist Olivier Brault, as soloist. Two other AF violinists, Johanna Novum and Julie Andrijeski, will do the honors in another Vivaldi concerto, the famous one in d-minor for two violins that Johann Sebastian Bach liked so well that he turned it into a solo organ work.
Brault maintains a busy career in addition to his work with Apollo’s Fire. In Québec, he serves as concertmaster for Les Boréades de Montréal and Ensemble Caprice and runs his his own group, Sonate 1704, devoted to French music for violin and continuo — one of Brault’s specialties. When we spoke via Skype, he had recently returned from Belgium, where he participated in concerts, classes and lectures on music for that combination of musicians. [Read more…]