by Daniel Hathaway
Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts usually draw on folk music that has travelled from the Old World to the New, but this year’s program delved deeper into musical emigration. Three Clevelanders were joined by three members of Europe’s The Early Folk Band in an engaging concert of ballads that have both been frozen in place by literary collectors and constantly altered through the oral tradition in the British Isles and North America. Like some members of Apollo’s Fire, the musicians of The Early Folk Band play pre-1800s music on period instruments but also have a parallel interest in folk music, and seek to bridge the gap between two genres that already have much in common. [Read more…]
Apollo’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.