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APOLLOS FIRE BRINGS MOZART PROGRAM TO FINNEY CHAPEL APRIL 27
APRIL 9, 2002-- The Artist Recital Series at Oberlin College concludes its 123rd season with an all-Mozart program by Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, on Saturday, April 27, at 8:00 P.M. in Finney Chapel, located at the corner of Professor and Lorain Streets. Tickets can be purchased from Oberlin's Central Ticket Service (440-775-8169) and are priced at $10 for students; $22 for seniors and Oberlin faculty, staff, and alumni; and $24 for the general public.
Jeannette Sorrell will conduct the program, which includes Mozart's Requiem and his Piano Concerto in D Minor featuring fortepianist John Gibbons. This concert celebrates the 10th anniversary of Apollo's Fire, and duplicates the program offered as part of its inaugural season when, to quote The Plain Dealer, the group "burst upon the scene."
Ms. Sorrell founded Apollo's Fire in 1992 with the assistance of Roger Wright, former Artistic Administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra (now with the BBC in London). Two years earlier she received her Artist Diploma in harpsichord from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and was immediately invited to join the faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, where she taught from 1990 to 1994.
Ms. Sorrell brings to the stage an unusual background as both orchestral conductor and early music performer. As a harpsichordist, she studied with Lisa Crawford and Gustav Leonhardt, and took both the First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the Spivey International Harpsichord Competition in 1991.
As a conductor, Ms. Sorrell studied at the Tanglewood Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival, where she was a conducting fellow in 1990. Her performance of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony with the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra, also in 1990, was selected and broadcast by National Public Radio as one of the "outstanding performances of the year." In August 1997 she conducted the Mozart Requiem with members of The Cleveland Orchestra, to a standing ovation and critical acclaim.
Ms. Sorrell's guest engagements as concerto soloist include the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the Ohio Chamber Orchestra. In addition, she made her Boston debut as guest conductor and soloist with the Handel & Haydn Society in January 2001. She is the winner of the 1994 Erwin Bodky Award, given annually to an outstanding young performer in early music. Together with Apollo's Fire, Ms. Sorrell is the recipient of the 1995 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, given to an outstanding project involving the collaboration of scholars and performers, and the recipient of the 1998 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for Classical Music.
John Gibbons is Chair of the Historical Performance Department at the New England Conservatory of Music. A distinguished keyboard artist and member of the Boston Museum Trio, Gibbons has performed as harpsichord and fortepiano soloist with major ensembles in the U.S. and Europe, among them the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Chamber Symphony, Orchestra of the 18th Century, Philharmonia Baroque, and the Da Camera Society of Houston. He received the Erwin Bodky Prize (1969), the NEC Chadwick Medal (1967), and a Fulbright Scholarship for study with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. Gibbons performs regularly at such festivals as those in Torino and Spoleto, Italy, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Aston Magna Festival in the Berkshires.
Apollo's Fire is dedicated to the performance of 17th- and 18th-century music on the period instruments for which that music was written. The ensemble unites a growing cadre of Ohio-based baroque artists with renowned early music specialists from across North America and Europe.
The orchestra received a start-up grant from the Cleveland Foundation in March 1992, and made its debut to critical acclaim in June of that year. Since then, Apollo's Fire has performed in Toronto, Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Columbus, Detroit, Pittsburgh, with the American Bach Project in Milwaukee, and with the New World Symphony's Baroque Festival in Miami. Following the groups March concert at the Library of Congress, The Washington Post called them "a superb chamber ensemble that pairs vigor with finesse." Also praised were ensemble members (and Oberlin faculty) Michael Lynn and Kathie Lynn, who perform, respectively, recorder and flute. "[They] displayed stunning artistry . . . taking subtle advantage of the instruments delicately contrasting timbres."
Apollo's Fire is frequently broadcast across the country on National Public Radio's "Performance Today" and can also be heard on Canada's CBC, European Community Radio, and in Northeast Ohio on WCLV and WKSU. Apollo's Fire records for ECLECTRA and has released six commercial recordings on that label to date. Also in celebration of its tenth season, the orchestra will record a disc of Telemann concertos and three discs of Mozart.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, founded in 1865, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States, and the only major music school in the country linked with a preeminent college of arts and sciences.
For more information, please visit the conservatory website.
Media Contact: Marci Janas
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