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Apollo’s Fire: Music of the Jewish & African Diasporas (Mar. 8)

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by Kevin McLaughlin

Who doesn’t love an Apollo’s Fire concert? Jeannette Sorrell and troupe always seem to offer a festival for the eye and ear — thoughtful thematic programs, all-out committed musicianship, and infectious exuberance. Wednesday’s program at Bath Church UCC was all this and more.

The third in a triptych of Jewish-themed programs titled “Exile and Resilience,” this one — thoughtfully conceived and researched program by Sorrell — offered seven perspectives on Jewish and African exile.

[Read more…]

Alan Choo & Apollo’s Fire:  “Muse of Fire” (Feb. 3)

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by Peter Feher

Longtime fans of Apollo’s Fire might think they’ve heard everything possible from Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, but they should have another listen. A fresh lineup of musicians and a largely unfamiliar set of composers were featured in the group’s concerts this month, making for an exciting evening with just a hint of trial and error.

Spearheading the experiment was violinist Alan Choo, a regular standout performer with Apollo’s Fire and, as of this season, the ensemble’s Assistant Artistic Director. With “Muse of Fire,” the first program he’s led here entirely solo, Choo played up the idea of coming to the fore. He chose a handful of small-scale works by lesser-known composers of the 17th century and then let much of this music speak brilliantly for itself.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Rosary Sonatas are the perfect vehicle for a violinist looking to make a splash. Choo has been putting all his energy into polishing these pieces, recording the complete set for an album he’s headlining with Apollo’s Fire (due out next year) and highlighting two of the fifteen sonatas here. The mastery and deliberation that come from knowing a score so well shone through in his performance on Friday, February 3 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: early Baroque treasures feature the bow of violinist Alan Choo

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by Daniel Hathaway

Most people who work multiple jobs have to factor commuting time into their schedules, but Apollo’s Fire concertmaster Alan Choo, recently also appointed assistant artistic director of the ensemble, doesn’t reckon his travel in hours. Home is in Singapore, where Choo founded Red Dot Baroque in 2018, and that’s 9,465 air miles from Cleveland.

Choo is in town for a few weeks this time to be featured in Apollo’s Fire’s “Muse of Fire” programs that begin on Thursday, February 2, in Akron and end on Sunday, February 5 in Rocky River, with two nights at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights in between.

His main assignment is the solo violin role in two of 17th-century Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Rosary Sonatas — musical meditations on the five Joyful Mysteries, the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and the five Glorious Mysteries of the life of Christ.

Probably written in the 1670s, but unknown to modern ears until first published in 1905, the devotional work is preserved in a beautiful manuscript held in the Bavarian State Library. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: a dark and 
stormy afternoon (Nov. 13)

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by Stephanie Manning

On a recent chilly Sunday in Cleveland Heights, waves of sleet skittered down from the heavens, ricocheting off anything that stood in their way. But the real storm was brewing inside St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where Apollo’s Fire and director Jeannette Sorrell took the stage for their latest program. “Storms and Tempests” entertained a packed house on November 13, as the Baroque orchestra played up the drama of both nature and love.

The passionate mood of the afternoon was equally matched by its soloists, both familiar faces to the ensemble. The first was Alan Choo, concertmaster and Assistant Artistic Director, who brought a crackling intensity to Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in E-flat, Op. 8, No. 5. The whirling arpeggios and devilish technical passages lived up to the piece’s name: “Tempesta di Mare,” or “Storm at Sea.”

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Apollo’s Fire: Mozart & the Chevalier at St. Raphael in Bay Village (May 8)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Turning thirty is a Big Deal for an individual, but no less significant a milestone for a musical ensemble. Just ask the musicians of Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, who marked that occasion with a trio of concerts last weekend led by its founder Jeannette Sorrell.

The middle show, on Saturday in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center,  reflected the Orchestra’s stature as a group that can share a stage with distinguished ensembles in mainline venues. The programs on Friday and Sunday in churches in Akron and Bay Village took profit of Apollo’s Fire’s portability and its determination to bring music out to people where they are.

The programming was festive, featuring an overture, a solo motet, and a symphony by the divine Mozart, and unusual for highlighting the work of a fascinating, under- unexplored composer who could handily win a sword fight against five attackers in the afternoon, then dust himself off and play chamber music at night. [Read more…]

Thirty years with Apollo’s Fire: looking back — and forward — with Jeannette Sorrell

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by Daniel Hathaway

Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, will celebrate its 30th anniversary this weekend with three concerts: one in the 1930s splendor of Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center on Saturday, May 7 at 7:30 pm, flanked by programs in Akron and Bay Village on Friday and Sunday.

Founder Jeannette Sorrell will welcome soprano Sonya Headlam and violinist Francisco Fullana for music by Mozart — the Don Giovanni Overture, Exsultate, Jubilate, and the “Haffner” Symphony, No. 35 — nestled among two works by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: an aria from L’Amant anonyme and a violin concerto.

The venues symbolize the stature the period instrumental ensemble has attained in mainstream concert music, as well as its determination to bring performances out into the community. I reached Jeannette Sorrell for a Zoom conversation last week to gather her thoughts about the past three decades, and to muse about what lies ahead for an organization that started in a sheep barn on Cleveland’s East Side but now enjoys access to some of the world’s premiere performance spaces and summer festivals. (The sheep barn is still among them.) [Read more…]

Fire, Grace, and Ash at St. Malachi’s April 30

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by Mike Telin

“Music is something that throughout time has developed different flavors around the world,” violinist Edwin Huizinga said during a Sunday morning telephone conversation.

“There are no borders in music. And it’s amazing to me that even centuries ago, music was being shared in houses and pubs. Even then there were people traveling around. I always think of O’Carolan, who was this itinerant Irish harpist.

“He was blind and there are stories of him meeting up with Baroque musicians and composers, and sharing tunes with each other. So one of my passions in life is to share the fact that all music is similar in the way that it’s created. It comes from a rhythmical background, and a community background.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: 20 minutes with Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana

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by Daniel Hathaway

Born in Palma de Mallorca, raised in Madrid, and having spent a few summers in Aspen where he learned English, violinist Francisco Fullana was turned loose on New York City at the tender age of 16.

He made the most of that experience. Now 32, and one of the friendliest interviewees you can imagine, he told me in a telephone conversation that he was very lucky to have finished high school early so he could spend six months exploring and taking lessons in New York before his Juilliard School audition in March.

“By chance, I met this wonderful lady in Aspen — we were just sitting near each other and talking,” he said. “Susan Beckerman loved classical music, and ended up hosting me for a year in her beautiful house in New York. I had the most incredible time. I went to concerts and opera with her, but most of the time, since I didn’t know anybody, I went to museums, got into photography, and walked around taking in the whole city and falling in love with it. Then I got to Juilliard where they put you in a dorm with 200 freshmen. I was a bit wild for a little while, but it was a great life experience. No regrets!”

Fullana, who is now artist-in-residence with Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, will be featured with Apollo’s Fire this week in two local performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Concerto in d, on a program that will be repeated in Weill Hall at New York’s Carnegie Hall. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Israel in Egypt (Feb. 17)

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by Peter Feher   

When it comes to Handel’s oratorios, another repeat isn’t always a welcome thing. But Apollo’s Fire knows how to make an evening exciting, and the group’s reprise performances of the composer’s Israel in Egypt last week — in a streamlined version first presented by the ensemble in 2017 — kept the intrigue factor high.

Artistic director Jeannette Sorrell adapted the Baroque score with certain modern expectations in mind. Her production retains Handel’s solemn opening, achieving a kind of period authenticity, but jettisons much of the repetition and inessential action in the rest of the music. The result is a lean and engaging dramatic arc — less than two hours — that translates 18th-century entertainment for the 21st century.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire captivates with jubilant Messiah (Dec. 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

There’s something so engaging about watching Handel’s Messiah performed live — especially in the capable hands of Apollo’s Fire and Apollo’s Singers. The movement of the instrumentalists, the stage presence of the singers, and the enthusiastic response from the audience all elevate the experience of listening to this familiar music. On the evening of December 8 at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, guest conductor Nic McGegan led the ensemble in a breathtaking performance of one of Handel’s cornerstone works.

[Read more…]

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