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A conversation with Jeannette Sorrell about Apollo’s Fire’s new season

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire will begin and end its 2018-2019 season with large orchestral works — starting with Mozart (and a bit of Haydn) this weekend, and culminating in J.S. Bach’s great B-minor Mass in April. In between, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will revisit Handel’s Messiah and present an updated version of Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain, as well as producing smaller concerts featuring Middle Eastern music, the “Mystery” violin sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, a program of double and quadruple concertos, and a new chamber series, Baroque Bistro, in collaboration with area restaurants.

Founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said in a telephone conversation that the opening concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Music on October 12 and 14 will give the Orchestra new opportunities with some familiar repertoire. “Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and the Ballet Music from Idomeneo are pieces we’ve lived with for a number of years, but we’ve never had the chance to play them in a proper-sized concert hall or to film them for video, which is becoming more and more important for the ensemble. Our videos were the first introduction to Apollo’s Fire for many people.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire Countryside Concert: “Tarantella!” in Hunting Valley (June 8)

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by Alice Koeninger

AF Tarantella_previewThe Baroque Music Barn and its three-sided seating make for an intimate setting, which was perfect for the Friday, June 8 concert by Apollo’s Fire titled “Tarantella!” Soprano Amanda Powell, plucked instrument musician and tenor Brian Kay, and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell invited the audience to join them on an energetic and emotional tour of “Rhythms of the Old Mediterranean.” This fantastical journey was dramatically narrated by Powell, and talks by Kay, Sorrell, and ensemble member Daphna Mor added to the experience.
 [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Tarantella!” —
fifteen minutes with Brian Kay

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by Daniel Hathaway

KAY-BrianOudist, lutenist, and guitarist Brian Kay has teamed up with vocalist Amanda Powell and artistic director and keyboardist Jeannette Sorrell to curate Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts show, “Tarantella! Rhythms of the Old Mediterranean.” The program will receive five performances in Hunting Valley, Avon Lake, Chardon, and Bath from June 8-12.

“Last year’s ‘Mediterranean Roots’ was so successful that Jeannette, Amanda, and I discussed how to rearrange it with a few additions of musicians and repertory to make it fresh,” Kay said in a telephone conversation. He added that it’s much easier to collaborate now that he and his wife have moved to Cleveland from Baltimore. “Now I can bring my guitar to Amanda’s house, where she’ll sit at the piano and we’ll play everything from Stevie Wonder to The Beatles to Medieval and Appalachian music and come up with ideas. Now Jeannette can also come by and participate.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: opening night of L’Orfeo at CIM (April 13)

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by David Kulma

EricaCarlosApollo’s Fire’s L’Orfeo is, in short, spell-binding. You should drop everything and go to their final local performance in Bay Village on Wednesday, April 18. If you’re not yet convinced, please keep reading. Two things stand out about this glorious semi-staged performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s “Favola di musica” in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on April 13. First is the magnificent production and performance. Second is the special music crafted by Apollo’s Fire principal cello René Schiffer to restore the original 1607 Bacchanale ending. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: being a fly on the wall at early rehearsals of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo

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by Daniel Hathaway

Coro Wandering onto setAdmirers of Thomas Forrest Kelly’s 2000 book First Nights: Five Musical Premieres probably wish they could have been physically present to witness the very first performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.

Me? I wish I had been able to attend the rehearsals — which often prove as interesting as the performances themselves. Rehearsals are where artistic philosophies get established, deals are made between directors and performers, and kinks get worked out. When the piece in question is a staged work, the rehearsal process becomes more complex: the ideas (and egos) of more than one director need to be melded into a single product, and there’s much more that can go awry.

Apollo’s Fire will produce three semi-staged performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in the next week: two in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm, and one at St. Raphael Church in Bay Village on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire makes Carnegie Hall debut in “An Evening at Bach’s Coffeehouse” (Mar. 22)

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by Jarrett Hoffman

AF BB Carnegie 032218New York, March 27.

Apollo’s Fire brought the house down and the heart rates up at their Carnegie Hall debut last Thursday, March 22 at the venue’s cozy Zankel Hall in New York City. The highlight of this “Evening at Bach’s Coffeehouse” was the closer: a thrilling, caffeinating performance of Vivaldi’s “La Follia” Sonata for Two Violins and Continuo, arranged by artistic director, conductor, and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell for this Cleveland-based Baroque orchestra.

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Apollo’s Fire: “Three Duels and a Wedding” at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts. (Feb. 9)

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by David Kulma

AF ForsytheThe Apollo’s Fire concert on Friday, February 9 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, “Three Duels and a Wedding” — with a surprise — highlighted three double concertos and the well-known Wedding Cantata by J.S. Bach. First, about the duels. The concert opened with Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto in e for flute and violin. Flutist Kathie Stewart’s pearly tone and concertmaster Olivier Brault’s joie de vivre were excellently complemented by harpsichordist/conductor Jeannette Sorrell and the ensemble. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: catching up with soprano Amanda Forsythe

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by Daniel Hathaway

FORSYTHE-Amanda-greenBoston-based soprano Amanda Forsythe returns to Apollo’s Fire this weekend to sing Johann Sebastian Bach’s wedding cantata, Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, with oboist Debra Nagy and Jeannette Sorrell’s period instrument ensemble. The program, titled “Three Duels and a Wedding,” also includes concertos by Bach and Telemann (those are the “Duels”), and will be performed in four different venues from February 8-11.

Forsythe has been a frequent guest of Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, having appeared with Apollo’s Fire in “Mozart and Papa Haydn” in 2013, “The Power of Love: Passions of Handel and Vivaldi” in 2014, and in Bach’s St. John Passion in 2016.

The soprano made a strong impression at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2013, when she sang the role of Edilia in Almira, Handel’s very first opera, written at the age of 19 and premiered in Hamburg in 1705. Reviewing those performances for The New York Times, James R. Oestreich found Forsythe “simply dazzling in her fioritura and her altitudinous rages.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” (Dec. 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Sugarloaf1The five sold-out performances of “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” this month attest to the popularity of Apollo’s Fire’s crossover shows. Heard on Saturday, December 9 at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights, the holiday sequel to “Sugarloaf Mountain: an Appalachian Gathering” was just as alluring and infectious as its predecessor, even if some of its elements were still in the process of settling in. [Read more…]

“Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” — 20 minutes with Apollo’s Fire’s Amanda Powell

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Powell-AmandaBuilding on their recent summer programs exploring the Celtic immigrant experience in Appalachia, Apollo’s Fire will celebrate “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” with five area performances running from Saturday, December 2 to Sunday, December 10 (see our Concert Listings for times and locations).

Featuring vocalists Amanda Powell and Ross Hauck, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will also greatly expand their band from the eight-musician summer troupe, adding to the mix the voices of Apollo’s Singers and the children’s choir Apollo’s Musettes, as well as bagpipes, additional fiddles, and dancers. Guitarist-singer Brian Kay will give a pre-concert talk an hour before each performance.

As artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said in a season preview in October, the program will begin with medieval music from Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and folk carols. “Then we’ll cross the water for ‘Wanderers Under The Sky,’ which combines the flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt with immigrants wandering in Appalachia. The second half of the program takes place entirely in a little wooden church during a Christmas service, with Shape-Note hymns and spirituals.” [Read more…]

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