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Apollo’s Fire — “Wassail! an Irish Appalachian Christmas” at CMA (Dec. 17)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire’s 2023 Christmas Show, “Wassail! an Irish Appalachian Christmas,” was a reworking of its earlier crossover shows, “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” and “Sugarloaf Mountain: an Appalachian Gathering” — attractive programs of folk music wrapped around the narrative of immigrants from the British Isles who brought their tunes with them to the New World. I saw the most recent version in its final performance in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday, December 17.

The narrative, delivered by Derdriu Ring (also credited with theatrical direction) opens in an Irish village on Christmas Eve of 1849 during the Great Famine, then fast forwards to immigrants’ new homes in Appalachia on Christmas Day of the following year. A Wassailing segment captures the tradition of boozy, door-to-door caroling, followed by Winter by the Hearth, a celebration of coziness in the face of winter, then a segue into a telling of the Christmas story and preparations for the sea journey to America. [Read more…]

ChamberFest Cleveland: “Fidelity and Betrayal” (June 17)

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by Mike Telin

From the beginning, ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors have turned to creative themes for their programming inspiration. This season the Festival’s guiding light has taken a literary slant with Lightness of Being — after Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But don’t feel like you need to have read the novel to enjoy the concerts — Donald Rosenberg’s brilliantly written program notes will tell you what you need to know.

On Saturday, June 17 in CIM’s Mixon Hall, the program “Fidelity and Betrayal” included works from the standard repertoire, a never-performed work by a well-known composer, a piece inspired by Cuban and South American dances, and music that had never been heard before — anytime, anywhere.

 

[Read more…]

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…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Tapestry — Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy” (video)

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by Daniel Hathaway

With each of its themed programs, Apollo’s Fire is becoming more than just a period instrument ensemble that gives concerts. Its March program, “Tapestry — Jewish Ghettos of Baroque Italy,” which replaces performances of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, finds Jeannette Sorrell and her colleagues moving seamlessly out of their usual roles to morph into singing actors and dancers, all in order to bring the subject at hand to vibrant life.

The latest program, which visits the ghetto and palace at Mantua and the ghetto and church at Venice, uses expressive instrumental music by Salamone Rossi, Giuseppe Sammartini, Antonio Vivaldi, and Alessandro Marcello, two of Benedetto Marcello’s 50 psalm settings, and Hebrew prayers and songs associated with Passover and Purim to evoke the rich cultural life of those towns. [Read more…]

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…]

The Cleveland Opera’s Porgy and Bess: a conversation with conductor Darwin Aquino

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Opera (formerly Opera Circle) will conclude its season with a single performance of George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Ohio Theater in Playhouse Square on Saturday, June 1 at 7:30 pm.

Adapted from Dorothy and DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel and later play, Porgy, the piece debuted in Boston in September of 1935, then moved on to Broadway. The character of subsequent productions veered back and forth between opera and musical theater until a 1976 Houston Grand Opera version solidly re-established the work as what the composer himself called a “folk opera.”

The Cleveland performance, featuring Jonathan Stuckey as Porgy, and Karen Clark Green as Bess, will be led by Dominican-born conductor Darwin Aquino. He’s now based in St. Louis, where he works with several opera companies, a symphony orchestra, and two university orchestras. I reached him by telephone in Cleveland to chat about the Gershwins’ famous opera, which he’ll be conducting for the first time. [Read more…]

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