by Timothy Robson
On Thursday evening, June 16 at Baroque Music Barn in Hunting Valley, Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concerts presented a new show, “My Island Home: Songs and Stories of Newfoundland,” created by Meredith Hall and Sylvain Bergeron in cooperation with Montréal’s Ensemble La Nef.
by Daniel Hathaway
“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…]
by Daniel Hathaway
When summer arrives, Apollo’s Fire lets its hair down and goes off to visit Baroque music’s country cousin — the music of Appalachian America. The ensemble’s previous show, “Come to the River,” now has a prequel: “Sugarloaf Mountain,” an equally irresistible collection of tunes from the old and new worlds chronicling the passage of immigrants from the British Isles to their new homes in the American south — in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin and Daniel Hautzinger
“I’m excited because I feel like it might be one of the better things that I’ve put together,” Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeanette Sorrell exclaimed about her new program during a recent interview. While putting together her previous Appalachian-inspired program, “Come to the River,” Sorrell said, “I was pretty much a newcomer to the field. This time I feel I’m starting from a deeper place.”
Beginning on Thursday, June 12, and continuing through Sunday, June 22, at venues throughout the area (see our concert listings page for times and locations), Apollo’s Fire will present “Glory on the Mountain: An Appalachian Journey.” The concerts will feature the mixture of fiddle tunes, ballads, shape-note hymns, and spirituals that typify Appalachian music. (An extra performance on Saturday, June 14 at 3:00 pm has just been announced.)
“With ‘Come to the River’ I spent two years researching fiddle tunes and ballads from Appalachia and it was a wonderful introduction into that repertoire. I had heard some lovely ballads when I was in the Shenandoah Valley as a teenager, but it was not the music that I was performing and studying as my profession,” Sorrell recalled. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Since it premiered in December of 2011, Apollo’s Fire’s Sacrum Mysterium – A Celtic Christmas, has become a holiday favorite of area audiences. From Tuesday, December 3 through December 8 at locations through Northeast Ohio, Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire will present five performances of their acclaimed production that celebrates Celtic artistic traditions, interweaving Renaissance choral music with ancient pagan carols, folk dances and joyous fiddle tunes.
A colorful band of bagpipes, flutes, strings, and Celtic harp will join Apollo’s Singers. The performances also mark the return of three of Apollo’s Fire’s favorite guest artists — Canadian soprano Meredith Hall, British baroque guitarist and step dancer Steve Player and hammered dulcimer virtuoso Tina Bergmann.
ClevelandClassical.com reviewer William Fazekas called Sacrum Mysterium “…a careful balance of the familiar and the exotic [that includes] traditional Christmas songs [such as] The Coventry Carol, [and] early music standards” such as the 17th century Scottish carol Come, My Children Dere, and the instrumental numbers Scotch Cap and Wild Geese.” [Read more…]
by Alexandra A. Vago
From 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…]