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Director Dirk Garner fills us in on Baldwin Wallace’s 87th Bach Festival

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by Daniel Hathaway

Founded in 1932 by Albert Riemenschneider (probably best known today for his edition of Bach’s 371 harmonized chorales), the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival turns a spry 87 years old this year. Festival director Dirk Garner continues to infuse the extended Festival weekend with new ideas. We chatted with him by phone to ask what’s new on the agenda for 2019.

“There are two or three changes this year. We’ve added a Thursday evening concert specifically to celebrate our new orchestra conductor, Soo Han. He’s just been here a year, but he’s making a big splash. He’s a wonderful musician, and the students love him.” That opening concert on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 pm in Gamble Auditorium includes Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement of Bach’s Air on the G String from the third orchestral suite, Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D, and Christopher Theofanidis’ Rainbow Body.

“The Stokowski arrangement ties into what I think is so cool about this year’s Festival,” Garner said. “It shows the many faces of Bach in the 21st century. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire in Vivaldi, Bach & Telemann (March 8)

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by Timothy Robson

Despite the lurid title of last weekend’s Apollo’s Fire concerts — Three Duels and a Funeral — no blood was shed onstage at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday evening, March 8. The entertaining program concocted by director Jeannette Sorrell was a set of concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi, plus a humorous solo cantata by Georg Philipp Telemann eulogizing a talented, but murdered, canary. Each of the works had its own imaginative character. [Read more…]

Sulayman, Sorrell & Apollo’s Fire win Grammy for Songs of Orpheus

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by Daniel Hathaway

Apollo’s Fire was among the Grammy winners for classical music announced in Los Angeles on February 10. The award in the Best Solo Vocal Album category was given for the ensemble’s Avie recording, Songs of Orpheus, featuring tenor Karim Sulayman. Conductor Jeannette Sorrell led an ensemble that included Julie Andrijeski, Johanna Novom, Karina Schmitz, René Schiffer, Rebecca Landell Reed, William Simms, and Brian Kay.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Messiah at First Baptist, Shaker Hts. (Dec. 1)

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by David Kulma

Performances of Handel’s Messiah are as sure a sign that Christmas time has arrived as lights decorating homes and mailboxes stuffed with holiday sale advertising. So it’s no surprise that the evening of Saturday, December 1 found this reviewer at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights for an absorbing rendition of Handel’s classic oratorio from Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire alongside Apollo’s Singers. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “O Jerusalem” at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights (Nov. 12)

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by David Kulma

Over the course of two weekends from November 10 to 18, Apollo’s Fire celebrated the multicultural heritage of the Holy Land with “O Jerusalem!: Crossroads of Three Faiths.” This exploration of music of Jews, Christians, and Muslims was conceived and directed by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell as a sequel to their successful “Sephardic Journey” program first done in 2014. I attended the second concert on November 12 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire in Mozart and Haydn at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 12)

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by Timothy Robson

Jeannette Sorrell and her intrepid orchestra Apollo’s Fire performed Friday evening, October 12, in a somewhat unusual venue — for them — Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in somewhat unusual repertoire — again, for them — Mozart and Haydn. After listening for years to Apollo’s Fire in churches around Northeast Ohio, I had a bit of cognitive dissonance being in a real concert hall with relatively drier acoustics and seats rather than pews. Apollo’s Fire certainly performs in concert halls elsewhere in the United States and internationally, but it seemed on Friday that the group had not yet fully settled into the ambience of Gartner Auditorium. [Read more…]

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: 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…]

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