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 July 4, 2010 - THE PLAIN DEALER It's business as usual to find pop musicians captivating a crowd at Cain Park. Most of the performers who make a stop at the Cleveland Heights venue hail from the pop, jazz and folk fields. So the presence of a stellar troupe of singers and instrumentalists digging into down-home fare on a recent Friday night at Cain Park shouldn't have seemed so out of the ordinary. Well, it was and it wasn't. June 21, 2010 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM What an endlessly inventive group is Apollo's Fire! Their current offering, "Come to the River," billed as "An Early American Gathering," combines drama, personal recollection, American musical and religious history, and a corncrib full of music. Baroque meets bluegrass, and gospel, and shaped-note, and Celtic, and . . . . June 19, 2010 - THE PLAIN DEALER Members of Apollo's Fire, including music director Jeannette Sorrell, perform "Come to the River - An Early American Gathering" at various locations Northeast Ohio through Friday. Jeannette Sorrell’s Cleveland Baroque Orchestra is known best as Apollo’s Fire, even when the musicians diverge from their normal period-instrument activities. The ensemble takes such a detour every summer during their Countryside Concerts to glory in music of folk persuasion. Given the dominant nature of the offerings, perhaps the group should assume the temporary moniker Appalachia’s Fire. March 14, 2010 - THE PLAIN DEALER It’s easy to get bogged down in a debate about period vs. modern instruments. Does music sound best when the performers are playing instruments the composer might have known? There’s no simple answer. Apollo’s Fire found itself (unwittingly) addressing the issue this week when the 1877 Bluthner piano it was set to use in Mozart concerts came under the technical weather due to the Ohio weather. In that historic instrument’s place, Sergei Babayan chose a modern Steinway grand tuned slightly down to match the pitch of Jeannette Sorrell’s Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. February 2, 2010 - THE PLAIN DEALER Enlightenment and entertainment have been key elements for Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, and music director Jeannette Sorrell throughout their 18-year history. A prime example is “Bach Family Fireworks,” the ensemble’s program this month. Sorrell invited two engaging actors, George Roth and Tom White, to serve as narrative glue during a potpourri of music by Johann Sebastian Bach and sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christoph Friedrich. Maybe another title would have been more apt: “Father Knows Best.” December 12, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER With all due respect to George Frideric Handel, “Messiah” doesn’t hold a monopoly on music that generates holiday rapture. Among the frigid-weather concert pieces for which local audiences are responding with hallelujah-like fervor is “Christmas Vespers,” a potpourri of music by Michael Praetorius and friends that Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, has made a biennial event. December 11, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM Jeannette Sorrell brought the alternately dazzling and charming music of Michael Praetorius to life once again at Trinity Cathedral on Thursday evening, in her compilation program, “Christmas Vespers” — with a little help from Apollo’s Fire’s 20 instrumentalists, 27 adult singers and the 15 young vocalists who make up Apollo’s Musettes. And a near-capacity crowd of happy listeners. November 9, 2009 - PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday night's concert by Apollo Fire was inspired in all the ways one expects of this brilliantly led ensemble. But the smart choice of repertoire and the artistry to perform it memorably were supplemented by an over-arching sensibility absent from most "thematic" concerts. The program was called "Mediterranean Nights" and had the festive spontaneity of an impromptu jam session. November 9, 2009 - PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE Long before sampling became a staple of pop and dance music, the original musical loop served as the basis for music 500 years ago. These were called ground basses -- short bass lines that repeated while the treble instruments or singers offered melodies and improvisation above. Think Pachelbel's Canon, however, as a fantastic concert Saturday night at Synod Hall showed, he was a latecomer to this party Not only that but, presented by the Renaissance & Baroque Society of Pittsburgh, the Cleveland-based period ensemble Apollo's Fire also showed how varied these bass lines got in 16th- and 17th-century Spain and Italy, different patterns of the ciacona (chaconne) and passacaglia, folia, fandango and lamento. But what was truly brilliant about this concert of nine musicians (including guitars, violins, harpsichord/cello/theorbo continuo, percussion and singing) was that director Jeannette Sorrell didn't "bass" it just on that. In fact, if they hadn't mentioned that these lively songs and dances all had ground basses in common, few of us would have noticed. There was just too much fun layered on top to pay attention to . . . November 1, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER Audiences have come to expect Apollo’s Fire to shed light on whatever music it prepares. This is certainly true when music director Jeannette Sorrell and her Cleveland Baroque Orchestra apply their period-instrument gifts to Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach and friends. And it also happens when the ensemble ventures away from the Baroque mainstream . . . October 5, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM Jeanette Sorrell is both a scholarly musicologist and a consummate musician. This past weekend, She could easily have presented an erudite paper, titled something along the lines of “The influence of Venetian church music on the choral style of J. S. Bach”; instead, Ms. Sorrell lead her period-performance orchestra and chorus Apollo’s Fire in a stunning series of concerts . . . {read the full article} October 3, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER Leave it to Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, to open a season in a blaze of glory. Make that Gloria. Come to think of it, make it both. Music director Jeannette Sorrell had a smart idea for the first program of her ensemble’s 18th season: sacred choral works by Vivaldi and Bach that include the texts “Glory be to God on high” (“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” in the original Latin). The orchestra’s concert Friday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights was another example of the heightened musical sensibilities that Sorrell and company pour into their Baroque duties . . . {read the full article}June 22, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM At the end of ‘Come to the River’, Apollo’s Fire’s latest summer Countryside Concerts production, Jeannette Sorrell had the audience humming along and eventually joining in a southern folk hymn a la Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion. Generating that level of audience engagement explains why the series sold out and an extra concert had to be added to the current run. We gathered at the river — or the Lake — for its final performance at the Huntington Playhouse in Bay Village on Sunday afternoon. Working from her story line about a preacher who moves his family from Pennsylvania to Kentucky during the Great Awakening around 1800, Sorrell has festooned the plot with a rich playlist of early American music (including repertory from the British Isles which became transplanted and in some cases transformed during its own journey to the new world). {read the full article}June 13, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER Every program that music director Jeannette Sorrell devises for Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, is a fascinating journey. The itinerary usually takes listeners through well-known or obscure European terrain. For her Countryside Concerts this year, Sorrell has come up with something closer to home: a musical travelogue through Appalachia of jubilant and poignant persuasion. The artistry is fresh, impeccable and enchanting. April 27, 2009 - THE CALGARY HERALD Apollo's Fire is a baroque orchestra whose program Sunday night, closing the current Calgary Pro Musica season, was subtitled: Vivaldi and Rameau do Battle with Nature. Calgarians were doing their own battle with nature as our winter weather continues into spring, but it didn't deter the healthy-sized audience that showed up to enjoy the diverting and diverse program presented by the American guests. March 9, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM Sorrell constructed a fascinating program built around the notion of ambitious composers locked in competition and intrigue in early 18th century Venice, accompanied by lively program notes which revealed colorful flaws in some of their personalities. Antonio Vivaldi was the leading figure, represented by a movement from his Concerto in F for three violins… March 6, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER Competition among composers in 18th-century Venice appears to have been heated. Put it this way (in alphabetical order): Tomaso Albinoni vs. Alessandro Marcello vs. Benedetto Marcello vs. Antonio Vivaldi vs. Francesco Veracini. Thank goodness for the enmity. It fueled creative fires that inspired a bounty of delicious music. February 2, 2009 - CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM "Purcell’s 'Dido and Aeneas' is an opera an opera hater can love”, as Allan Kozinn put it in a New York Times review last December. “It’s in English, and it runs less than an hour. Its libretto, drawn from Virgil, is fantastical but not idiotic, and Purcell’s music brings it to life magnificently”. It’s also remarkably adaptable to wildly different approaches in staging — Kozinn happened to be commenting on a production by the Sybarite Chamber Players which relocated the action to Wall Street and turned the plot’s love interest into a planned corporate merger that fell apart when Aeneas was suddenly called back to Italy, all without doing any damage to the music. January 31, 2009 - THE PLAIN DEALER Need help preparing a 350th-birthday celebration? Look no further than Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. Music director Jeannette Sorrell and company are in the midst of throwing a series of enchanting parties for Henry Purcell, the English composer who was born in 1659. Their program of theater music and the opera "Dido and Aeneas" runs through Tuesday at Cleveland's Josephat Arts Hall.
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