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Early Folk Band musicians to join Apollo’s Fire in “Far Beyond the Sea”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts will feature a new trans-Atlantic collaboration this month. Ian Harrison, Gesine Bänfer, and Steven Player of Europe’s The Early Folk Band will join Clevelanders Amanda Powell, Tina Bergmann, and Brian Kay in five performances of “Far Beyond the Sea” from June 6 through 10. This genre-crossing project involving old world ballads has been contemplated for some time but is just now coming to fruition.

“Jeannette Sorrell is one of our greatest fans, and we’ve been trying to get this sort of thing together for six or seven years,” Harrison and Bänfer said in a tag-team Skype conversation from Freiburg, Germany. “Either we weren’t free or they weren’t free, or we couldn’t decide how to do it, but we’re very happy that it’s now working.” [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, La Nef, and soprano Meredith Hall come together again for “My Island Home”

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by Daniel Hathaway

HALL-Meredith“If people liked ‘Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic Christmas,’ they’ll know how great it is when you mix La Nef in with Apollo’s Fire people,” soprano Meredith Hall said in a recent telephone conversation.

Hall, who starred in that earlier show, returns to Cleveland this week to rejoin Sylvain Bergeron of Montréal’s Ensemble La Nef; Apollo’s Fire soloists Susanna Gilmore, fiddle, Kathie Stewart, flutes, and Tina Bergmann, hammered dulcimer; and other members of the Countryside Concerts ensemble for six performances of a new summer program called “My Island Home: Songs and Stories of Newfoundland.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire announces Countryside Concerts and overview of its 25th anniversary season

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Countryside-SorrellApollo’s Fire has released details of its summer Countryside Concerts for June and July of 2016, which will include two shows.

June 16-20 — My Island Home: songs and stories of Newfoundland will feature Meredith Hall, soprano, Sylvain Bergeron, lute, and members of Apollo’s Fire and La Nef of Montréal. A rustic celebration of the music of Hall’s homeland with fiddles, flutes, harp, gamba, percussion, and hammered dulcimer. [Read more…]

Review: Apollo’s Fire Countryside Concerts — “My Father was a Matchmaker,” June 6

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by Alexandra A. Vago

FOLEY-TomáseenFrom glen to glen, the bagpipes shepherded guests to the Baroque Barn in Hunting Valley on Thursday, June 6, for the first of several performances of Apollo’s Fire’s charmingly rustic program, “My Father was a Matchmaker: Tunes & Tales of Love from Old Ireland” with Irish storyteller Tomáseen Foley. The weather, as if on cue from Mother Nature, was misty, cloudy, and a wee bit chilly – but the perfect setting for tunes and tales of love from Old Ireland.

While one might have longed for a pint of Guinness and a warm hearth, William Coulter (guitar/guest musical director) masterfully led the musicians and audience to a remote parish in Ireland, where we met a true Irish culture-bearer, Tomáseen Foley. The evening was an intimate glimpse into the Céilí, an informal social gathering that includes song, dance, poetry and storytelling.

Mr. Foley regaled us with tales of Tade, one of his father’s matchmaking subjects, and a sentimental love story of W. B. Yeats and Maud Gonner. The program was woven together as skillfully as the most intricate, interlaced Celtic knot. [Read more…]

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