Apollo's Fire to Make Carnegie Hall Debut; Join Boston Early Music Festival Series

Apollo's Fire continues their busy 2017/2018 season with a 5-city tour of their celebrated A Night at Bach's Coffeehouse program, including the ensemble's debut at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, March 22. Conceived and conducted by the ensemble's founding artistic director, conductor/harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell, A Night at Bach's Coffeehouse is inspired by the coffeehouse concerts led by J.S. Bach in Leipzig during the 18th century and features music by Bach and his contemporaries, including Telemann, Handel, and Vivaldi. The tour begins at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury, VT on March 20 and concludes at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA on March 27.

Coming off of an exciting 12 months which has included sold-out concerts at the Tanglewood and Ravinia festivals in July 2017, Apollo's Fire brings its Bach's Coffeehouse program to the East Coast. The program, which played to sold-out audiences at the BBC Proms and Tanglewood in 2015, evokes the musical atmosphere of the Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, where J.S. Bach performed his own music and that of his most admired colleagues, Telemann and Vivaldi. Repertoire includes Telemann's Suite "Burlesque de Quixotte," based on the adventures of Don Quixote; Bach's virtuosic "Brandenburg" Concerti Nos. 4 and 5 and the Chaconne from Handel's Terpsicore; and Sorrell's acclaimed arrangement of Vivaldi's La Folia ("Madness").

The tour begins on March 20, 2018 at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, followed by Apollo's Fire Carnegie Hall debut on March 22 at Zankel Hall, part of Carnegie's "Baroque Unlimited" Series; the Boston Early Music Festival Series on March 24; Worcester Music in Worcester, Massachusetts on March 25; and the Forbes Center for Performing Arts at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia on March 27.

Jeannette Sorrell, Artistic Director of Apollo's Fire, on Bach's Coffeehouse concerts:

"I think that Bach's Coffeehouse concerts can serve as such an inspiring model for music-making today. The orchestra was Bach's student ensemble from the University of Leipzig, who were mostly law students and philosophy students. The audience was a lively crowd of men and women (the women weren't supposed to attend but they did) who enjoyed coffee and conversation as well as the music. Bach often featured his sons as soloists. All together, it was a lively, multi-generational scene where the highest professionals and enthusiastic amateurs enjoyed making music together."

Known for its dedication to evoking the various Affekts or emotional moods in the listeners, Apollo's Fire enjoys a full annual series in Cleveland aside from being the U.S.'s busiest international touring baroque orchestra. Upcoming highlights include a semi-staged production of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (supported by the National Endowment for the Arts), which tours to the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Cal Performances at U.C. Berkeley; and the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, California. In June, Apollo's Fire will bring a Bach and Vivaldi program to the Caramoor Festival, followed by a reprise of Bach's Coffeehouse at the Ravinia Festival. In August, the ensemble tours the United Kingdom and Ireland with Sorrell's award-winning program, Sugarloaf Mountain - An Appalachian Gathering.

March 2018 Tour: A Night at Bach's Coffeehouse

Program

TELEMANN Don Quixote Suite (selections), TWV 55: G 10

BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049

BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in N*E*R*D Major, BWV 1050

HANDEL Chaconne from Terpsicore

VIVALDI/arr. Sorrell La Folia ("Madness"), after the Sonata Op. 1, No. 12

Dates

Tuesday, March 20, 7:00PM

Catamount Arts, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Tickets and Information: click here

Thursday, March 22, 7:30PM

Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, New York

Tickets and information: click here

Saturday, March 24, 8:00PM

Boston Early Music Festival Series, Emmanuel Church, Boston, Massachusetts

Tickets and Information: click here

Sunday, March 25, 4:00PM

Worcester Music, Tuckerman Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts

Tickets and Information: click here

Tuesday, March 27, 8:00PM

James Madison University, Forbes Center for the Performing Arts, Harrisonburg, Virginia

Tickets and Information: click here

About Jeannette Sorrell, Artistic Director & Conductor

Jeannette Sorrell is recognized internationally as one of today's most creative early-music conductors. She has been credited by the U.K.'s BBC Music Magazine for forging "a vibrant, life-affirming approach to the re-making of early music... a seductive vision of musical authenticity."

Hailed as "one of the world's finest Baroque specialists" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), Sorrell was one of the youngest students ever accepted to the prestigious conducting courses of the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals. She studied conducting under Robert Spano, Roger Norrington and Leonard Bernstein, and harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. She won both First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition, competing against over 70 harpsichordists from Europe, Israel, the U.S., and the Soviet Union.

Sorrell founded Apollo's Fire in 1992. Since then, she and the ensemble have built one of the largest audiences of any baroque orchestra in North America. She has led AF in sold-out concerts at London's BBC Proms and London's Wigmore Hall, Madrid's Royal Theatre (Teatro Real), the Grand Théâtre de l'Opéra in Bordeaux, the Aldeburgh Festival (UK), the Tanglewood, Aspen, and Ravinia festivals, Boston's Early Music Festival, the Library of Congress, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), among others.

As a guest conductor, Sorrell has worked with many of the leading American symphony orchestras and is represented by Columbia Artists Management. Recent engagements include the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center (Handel's Messiah). Her 2013 debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as conductor and soloist in the complete Brandenburg Concertos was met with standing ovations every night, and hailed as "an especially joyous occasion" (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). The same occurred with 2017 debut with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, where the Twin Cities Pioneer Press wrote, "Other masters of the [baroque] style have been paying visits, but none has summoned up as much energy, enthusiasm and excitement from the orchestra as Sorrell." She has also appeared as conductor or conductor/soloist with the Utah Symphony (twice), New World Symphony (Miami), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis with the St. Louis Symphony, Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), and has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra as guest keyboard artist.

Sorrell and Apollo's Fire have released 26 commercial CDs, of which seven have been bestsellers on the Billboard classical chart. Her recordings include the complete Brandenburg Concerti and harpsichord concerti of Bach (with Sorrell as harpsichord soloist and director), which was praised by the London Times as "a swaggering version... brilliantly played by Sorrell." She has also released four discs of Mozart, and was hailed as "a near-perfect Mozartian" by Fanfare Record Magazine. Other recordings include Handel's Messiah, the Monteverdi Vespers and four creative crossover projects: Come to the River - An Early American Gathering (Billboard Classical #9, 2011); Sacrum Mysterium- A Celtic Christmas Vespers (Billboard Classical #11, 2012); Sugarloaf Mountain - An Appalachian Gathering (Billboard Classical #5, 2015); and Sephardic Journey - Wanderings of the Spanish Jews (Billboard World Music Chart #2 and Billboard Classical #5, Feb. 2016).

Sorrell has attracted national attention and awards for creative programming. She holds an Artist Diploma from Oberlin Conservatory, and honorary doctorate from Case Western University, two special awards from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work on early American music, and an award from the American Musicological Society, and two different awards from the Cleveland Arts Prize. Passionate about guiding the next generation of performers, Ms. Sorrell has led many baroque projects for students at Oberlin Conservatory and is a frequent guest coach at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

About Apollo's Fire

Apollo's Fire was founded in Cleveland by the award-winning harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell. Sorrell envisioned an ensemble dedicated to the baroque ideal that music should evoke the various Affekts or passions in the listeners. Apollo's Fire is a collection of creative artists who share Sorrell's passion for drama and rhetoric.

Apollo's Fire has performed four European tours, including sold-out concerts at the BBC Proms in London, the Aldeburgh Festival (UK), Madrid's Royal Theatre, London's Wigmore Hall, Bordeaux's Grand Théâtre, and venues in France, Austria, Italy and Portugal.

Chosen by the Daily Telegraph as one of London's "Best 5 Classical Concerts of 2014," AF was praised for "superlative music-making... combining European stylishness with American entrepreneurialism."

Apollo's Fire will make its Carnegie Hall debut in March 2018, and the concert already sold out in August - the day that tickets went on sale. Other North American tour engagements have included the Tanglewood, Aspen, and Ravinia festivals, the Boston Early Music Festival series, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and major venues in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston. The ensemble has performed two major U.S. tours of the Monteverdi Vespers (2010 and 2014) and a 9-concert tour of the Brandenburg Concertos in 2013.

At home in Cleveland, Apollo's Fire enjoys sold-out performances at its subscription series, which has drawn national attention for creative programming.

Apollo's Fire has released 26 commercial CDs and currently records for the British label AVIE. Seven of the ensemble's CD releases have become best-sellers on the classical Billboard chart: the Monteverdi Vespers, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos & Harpsichord Concertos, a disc of Handel arias with soprano Amanda Forsythe titled "The Power of Love" (Billboard Classical #3, 2015), and Jeannette Sorrell's four crossover programs - Come to the River - An Early American Gathering (Billboard Classical #9, 2011); Sacrum Mysterium- A Celtic Christmas Vespers (Billboard Classical #11, 2012); Sugarloaf Mountain - An Appalachian Gathering (Billboard Classical #5, 2015); and Sephardic Journey - Wanderings of the Spanish Jews (Billboard World Music Chart #2 and Billboard Classical #5, Feb. 2016).