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Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute: Week One, Day Seven (Sunday, June 25) — A chat with Kathie Stewart

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by Daniel Hathaway

Kathie-Tuning-1On the seventh day, BPI rested — even Kathie Stewart, who is usually at work Monday through Friday shortly after dawn as Oberlin’s Curator of Harpsichords. Known publically to Apollo’s Fire audiences as the principal flutist in Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Stewart’s role at BPI is usually hidden from sight, although the results of her labors are crucial to the work of BPI’s 22 harpsichord students.

Few other institutions could provide multiple practice instruments for that many keyboardists. BPI students have access to 18 harpsichords of various configurations, and Stewart tunes them all every weekday beginning between 6:00 and 6:30 am. “In ten days, that comes out to 180 tunings, plus another 20 for concerts and faculty rehearsals,” she told me, taking a break from touching up one of Lisa Goode Crawford’s personal instruments. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Beethoven the Revolutionary” at CMA with Noah Bendix-Balgley (Apr. 28)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Bendix-Balgley-CMATo cap off its 25th anniversary season, Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, made a big leap across historical and stylistic boundaries into the early Romantic music of Beethoven. In the second of four performances on Friday evening, April 28 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sorrell fielded an orchestra of 49 players (huge by AF standards) and joined forces with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley (making his period instrument debut) to lead a spirited foray into music premiered in the first decade of the 19th century. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire caps off its 25th season with “Revolutionary Beethoven”

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by Daniel Hathaway

afjsconductingHistorical performance groups have revitalized Baroque music by performing 17th- and 18th-century works on the instruments for which they were written. More recently, a number of those ensembles have made forays into the classical world of Haydn and Mozart and the early Romantic era of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, expanding their musical rhetoric and stretching the capabilities of their instruments.

Now add Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire to that list. Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will conclude their 25th-anniversary season with “Beethoven and Schubert Rediscovered,” a festival that includes four Beethoven concerts, a “Schubertiade,” a dance workshop, and lectures and panel discussions.

The Beethoven programs, which run from April 26-29, will feature Berlin Philharmonic first concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley performing the Violin Concerto. The program includes the Egmont Overture and the Fifth Symphony.

[Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Virtuoso Bach” in Rocky River (February 19)

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by Robert Rollin

NAGY-DebraThis past week Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra conducted by Jeannette Sorrell, presented five performances of its “Virtuoso Bach” program. Sunday afternoon’s performance at Rocky River Presbyterian Church benefitted visually from the church’s lovely setting, but the high ceiling and wide space created a rather muddy acoustic that at times affected the clarity of sound. [Read more…]

A trip to Venice with Apollo’s Fire (Nov. 20)

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by Nicholas Jones

love-in-veniceVenice can be pretty wet in November, but the music of Apollo’s Fire this weekend took us there and back with shoes dry and hearts warmed. With music director Jeannette Sorrell as tour guide, “Love in Venice: A Multicultural Fiesta” took us not only to  palazzi on the Grand Canal, but also ushered us safely through the crowded streets and tiny squares where Jews and Arabs traded and mixed — not always comfortably — with the ruling Christians. I attended the Sunday, November 20 performance at Rocky River Presbyterian Church. [Read more…]

Thomas J. Knab: an appreciation

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by ClevelandClassical.com Staff

knab-headsetThe passing of Grammy-winning audio engineer and information specialist Tom Knab on September 25 at the age of 61 was devastating not only to his family and friends, but also to a long list of colleagues, artists, ensembles, and institutions with whom he worked, and who treasured his expertise in recording and post-producing their music, both for distribution and for posterity. (Read an obituary in the Case Western Reserve University Daily, where he served as Chief Information Officer in the College of Arts and Sciences.)

Erica Brenner was one of Knab’s closest colleagues in the recording industry. They first met at Telarc, when she and Tom were “off hours” editors long before that company was sold and changed its emphasis. “We often handed projects off to each other,” she said in a recent conversation. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: “Resplendent Purcell” at First Baptist Church (October 8)

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by Nicholas Jones

purcell-henryThe short-lived English composer Henry Purcell wrote works that rank among the masterpieces of the Baroque. But, like many artists of the 17th century, he also had to produce a lot on demand. In his position as organist at both the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, he needed to work up music for a number of royal occasions. Necessarily, while some of his music is deeply personal, other works — like his odes for the queen’s birthday — were clearly more routinely produced. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire opens 25th anniversary season with “Resplendent Purcell” programs

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by Daniel Hathaway

afjsconducting“I want Apollo’s Fire’s 25th Anniversary Season to be extra flashy and triumphant,” Jeannette Sorrell exclaimed in a recent telephone conversation. “So we’ll open with a program of music by Henry Purcell, one of the six or seven great composers of all time, and stretch the organization by planning a Beethoven-Schubert mini-festival at the end.”

Most concertgoers would put Beethoven and Schubert in the “greatest of all time category,” but Purcell? Sorrell agrees that his is not a household name, but she’s betting that a program of music the late-17th century composer created to celebrate the joys and soothe the sorrows of the British royal family will increase his fortunes among Clevelanders. [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…]

Apollo’s Fire: “A Harlequin Romance” at Maltz Performing Arts Center (April 9)

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by Daniel Hathaway

playerAndrijeski_dancing_700x475 4.17.27 PMApollo’s Fire brought baroque dance in both its noble and theatrical styles to its engaging program, “A Harlequin Romance” at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in University Circle on Saturday evening, April 9. Dancers Julie Andrijeski and Steven Player were the headliners, but concertmaster Olivier Brault also got into the act, as did several orchestra members in an encore. [Read more…]

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