Taking its name from the classical god of music and the sun, Apollo’s Fire is dedicated to the performance of 17th- and 18th-century music on the period instruments for which it was written. Music Director Jeannette Sorrell gathers a select pool of dynamic and creative early-music artists from throughout North America and Europe. The ensemble has been praised internationally for stylistic freshness and buoyancy, animated spontaneity, technical excellence, and for the creativity of Sorrell’s programming.
HISTORY
Apollo’s Fire was founded in 1992 by Jeannette Sorrell, a young award-winning harpsichordist and conductor, who studied with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. The ensemble was launched with the assistance of Roger Wright, then Artistic Administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra (presently head of classical programming at the BBC).
Ms. Sorrell and her principal string players, who had been trained in the Netherlands by Sigiswald Kuijken and Anner Bylsma, set out to build an ensemble in the United States that would not only assimilate the principles of historical performance as developed by Leonhardt, Kuijken and Byslma, but would also transcend those principles, exploring uncharted territories of baroque expression. Sorrell and her colleagues take as their mantra the baroque ideal that music is about communication, and the role of the performer is to evoke various emotions in the listeners.
TOURING
Since its sold-out and critically acclaimed debut in 1992, Apollo’s Fire has performed at such venues as the Aspen Music Festival, the Miller Theatre series in New York City, the Boston Early Music Festival winter series, the Library of Congress, the Ojai Festival in California, the Chautauqua Institution in New York State, the New World Symphony’s Baroque Festival in Miami, the Oberlin College Artists Series, the CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, the National Academy of Sciences and the Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington, DC, and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Michigan, as well as two sold-out concerts in Cleveland’s Severance Hall.
Highlights of the 2007-8 season include Monteverdi performances at Cornell University and Penn State University; and a U.S. tour of Vivaldi concertos and arias under management by IMG Artists, with acclaimed mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore.
INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTS, RECORDINGS & AWARDS
Apollo’s Fire has been broadcast across North America in many holiday specials on National Public Radio. In addition, the ensemble has been featured on NPR’s World of Opera and SymphonyCast, as well as many broadcasts and two live studio interview-performances on NPR’s Performance Today. The ensemble’s CD recordings and holiday specials can also be heard on Britain’s BBC Radio, Canada’s CBC, and European Community Radio. In autumn 2008 Apollo’s Fire will launch a weekly concert broadcast series that will be carried internationally in North America and Europe.
Apollo’s Fire made its television debut in February 2008 at the invitation of the Cleveland PBS television station. The program, featuring Vivaldi concertos, was taped before a live studio audience and will be broadcast by selected PBS stations throughout North America during the coming months.
Apollo’s Fire has received critical acclaim for its thirteen CD recordings on the labels ECLECTRA (formerly) and KOCH INTERNATIONAL CLASSICS (currently). Titles include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Monteverdi Vespers, Mozart’s Requiem, and discs of Mozart symphonies, Vivaldi concertos, Telemann suites, and Praetorius’ Christmas Vespers.
Together with Jeannette Sorrell, Apollo’s Fire received the 1995 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, given for an outstanding project involving the collaboration of scholars and performers. Jeannette Sorrell is also the recipient of the 1994 Erwin Bodky Award given by the Cambridge Society for Early Music; an honorary doctorate from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland; and the Cleveland Arts Prize.
ARTISTIC PHILOSOPHY
Music is a form of communication – a language that resonates with people in an emotional and spiritual way, touching people in a way that words cannot. The treatises from the 17th and 18th centuries all talk about “Affekt” – the emotional character of the music. The performer’s role was to evoke a particular Affekt or emotional state in the listeners – whether that be joy or contemplation or rage or despair or triumph. The baroque performer used every possible means to cast his emotional spell on the audience – rhetoric, gesture, harmony.
Apollo’s Fire is a collection of artists who believe passionately that our job is to communicate – to take the listeners with us on an emotional journey. If, at the end of two hours, the audience is moved to tears, or joy, or laughter, or prayer, then we have done a good night’s work.
– Jeannette Sorrell
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