JEANNETTE SORRELL has won attention as a leading voice in the new generation of early music conductors. She combines an unusual background as both orchestral conductor and early music performer. As a conductor, she studied at the Tanglewood Music Festival under Roger Norrington and Leonard Bernstein and served as a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. As a harpsichordist, she studied with Gustav Leonhardt, and took First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Assistant Conductor post with the Cleveland Orchestra, which led to the founding of Apollo’s Fire; since then she has enjoyed a busy career touring, recording and performing national and international broadcasts with this ensemble.

Ms. Sorrell has received critical acclaim for guest engagements with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis with the St. Louis Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Oberlin Conservatory Opera Theatre, the Akron Symphony (in 2005 and 2007), the Arizona Opera, the Windsor Symphony in Canada, the Magnolia Baroque Festival in North Carolina, and the Oberlin Baroque Orchestra, which she has conducted annually since its inception in 2004. She serves as Artistic Advisor of the Case/CIM Baroque Orchestra. As a keyboard artist she has performed throughout North America, France and Italy, and has been featured on several live performance-interviews on National Public Radio. Recent keyboard engagements include the St. Matthew Passion with the Cleveland Orchestra and a series of recitals for the Cambridge Society for Early Music..

Ms. Sorrell is the winner of the 1994 Erwin Bodky Award in early music, the 1995 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and a special citation from the Mayor of Cleveland. She holds an honorary doctorate from Case Western University. Her eleven commercial recordings include Monteverdi's Vespers and the complete Brandenburg Concerti.

"Sorrell's brilliance was stamped on every aspect of the performance . . . She must be one of the best conductors around in this repertoire."

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER