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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: Bach’s St. John Passion at First Baptist Church (March 4)

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by Nicholas Jones

StJohnTrinityMar2016Like all great drama, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions — his settings of the gospel accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion — present conflicting points of view. We see the Passion through so many characters in the story — the disciple Peter, who denies knowing Jesus; the conflicted Roman governor Pilate, who finds no guilt in Jesus and yet sends him to the cross; the angry crowd, which demands his crucifixion; and Jesus himself, suffering and yet transcending his suffering. At every point, Bach demands our involvement with the conflicting ways in which each of these actors interpret the crucial event of the Christian story. [Read more…]

CD Review: Apollo’s Fire — Sephardic Journey

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by Julian Ring

AF Sephardic CDMusicians touring foreign lands might absorb traces of a region’s musical vocabulary. But Sephardic Jews didn’t have much of a choice after their expulsion from what is now Israel around 700 BCE and from Spain in 1492. Encountering hostility everywhere they settled, Spain’s Jews spent centuries searching for a new home. They carried their prayers and songs with them as they traveled across the Iberian Peninsula, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. [Read more…]

Understanding Spiritual Nationality: Apollo’s Fire — Sephardic Journey (Feb. 5)

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by Christine Jay

sephardic_group_700One of the most remarkable elements of mankind is its ability to endure. History is filled with stories of people struggling, failing, succeeding, and surviving, but few have endured the centuries of exile and forced displacement experienced by the Jews. Performing an inspired program devised by artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, soprano Nell Snaidas, baritone Jeffrey Strauss, and cellist René Schiffer, Apollo’s Fire gave a sensational concert on February 5 at St. Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire to reprise Sephardic Journey and release new CD
of the production

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by Christine Jay

sephardic_group_700“It seemed like this was the next challenge,” said Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell before the orchestra’s 2014 debut performances of Sephardic Journey: Wanderings of the Spanish Jews. “Our Celtic program in particular made me ready to tackle something new.”

Reprising the popular show from two years ago, Apollo Fire will present four performances of Sephardic Journey, culminating in two public CD release parties after the February 5th and 7th performances. The ensemble’s ‘Sephardic Week’ will begin on Thursday, February 4th at 7:30 pm at Fairlawn Lutheran Church, with subsequent concerts at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights (February 5), the Maltz Performing Center at Cleveland’s University Circle (February 6), and at Baldwin Wallace’s Gamble Auditorium (February 7). [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire in Sacrum Mysterium (December 12)

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by Timothy Robson

AF-Sacrum-MysteriumApollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra, opened a two-night revival of their Christmas show Sacrum Mysterium: A Celtic Christmas on Saturday, December 12, at the First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. It was an unseasonably warm December evening, with every window in the church open to cool the capacity audience. [Read more…]

After summer triumphs on the road, Apollo’s Fire plans eight programs at home

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by Daniel Hathaway

SORRELL-JeannetteFollowing a series of sold-out concerts at Tanglewood and in England (London and Aldeburgh) and Italy, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire is busy putting the finishing touches on the eight programs they are planning around the area this season. We reached founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell to chat about last summer’s experiences and her plans for the season to come.

I began by asking about Apollo’s Fire’s debut at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. “It was really fun,” Sorrell said. “We had no idea that we were going to be sold out at Tanglewood. It was really a personal homecoming because I had studied in the conducting class there back in 1989 and I have such moving memories of that summer working with Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Bach “Family Frolic” at CIM’s Mixon Hall (January 22)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Healey-StraussApollo’s Fire’s “Fireside Concerts” this season gather audiences around the hypothetical hearth of the Bach family in Leipzig (before moving on to Zimmermann’s Coffee House). Music by Johann Christian (1735-1782) Wilhelm Friedmann (1710-1784) and Papa Bach himself feature the talented members of the ensemble’s Young Artist Apprentice Program performing alongside AF regulars, with a special appearance by three even younger members of Apollo’s Musettes. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Madeline Apple Healey to play Lieschen in Bach’s “Coffee Cantata”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Healey-StraussJohann Sebastian Bach’s charming cantata about a parent in the throes of despair over his daughter’s addiction to coffee forms the centerpiece of Apollo’s Fire’s next set of concerts. “Family Frolic” will begin its run on Thursday, January 22 with a performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Set in the context of a day in the Bach family quarters in Leipzig, the comedic cantata had — and will have — some connections to real life. One of Bach’s daughters answered to the nickname of Lieschen, and Madeline Apple Healey, the soprano who will play that role this weekend, actually works as a barista at Phoenix Coffee in Ohio City. And she does love the beverage she dispenses, she said in a telephone conversation. “I’m a coffee purist. Usually I just make a pourover of single origin coffee — Ethiopians are my favorite, though occasionally I’ll have a cappuccino.”

Bach penned his Kaffee-Kantate to be performed by the Leipzig Collegium Musicum at a Leipzig coffee emporium, possibly Zimmerman’s, where the composer’s student ensemble was a regular fixture. After the patrons are called to order by a narrator, Herr Schlendrian storms in, roaring like a bear over his daughter’s fascination with the caffeinated brew, which is all the rage among the younger set in Leipzig. Lieschen responds with an elaborate ode to coffee, and the conversation, or shall we say family argument, continues from that point. Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell, who has provided a new English translation, will direct the mini-drama with tenor Corey Shotwell as narrator and bass-baritone Jeffrey Strauss as Schlendrian. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Handel’s Messiah at First Baptist Church (December 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

AF-Messiah-SoloistsWhen you’re taking the risk of performing Handel’s most celebrated oratorio from end to end, you need to field a quartet of soloists with alluring personalities, bring together a stellar chorus and orchestra, and be able to count on your own fine sense of pacing — otherwise this two-and-a-half hour work could become tedious soon after the “Hallelujah” chorus. Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire had all of these elements securely in place on Saturday night at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Its version of Messiah — presented with a sense of theater, as Handel intended it to be — scintillated, charmed and inspired the large audience from Overture to “Amen.” [Read more…]

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