Ravinia 2021 - Issue 2

JASON HUDSON (APOLLO’S FIRE APOLLO’S FIRE Named for the classical god of music, heal- ing, and the Sun, Apollo’s Fire was founded in 1992 by harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell, who envisioned an ensem- ble dedicated to the Baroque ideal that music should evoke the various Affekts , or passions, in the listener. The ensemble is a collection of creative artists who share Sorrell’s passion for drama and rhetoric. Following its 2010 Lon- don debut at Wigmore Hall, also broadcast on the BBC, Apollo’s Fire has embarked on five European tours, including performanc- es at the BBC Proms (broadcast live across Europe), Aldeburgh Festival, Irish National Concert Hall and Opera House, Belfast Cas- tle, Tuscan Landscapes Festival, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Bordeaux’s Grand Théâtre, and further venues in Lisbon, Metz, and Bregenz, as well as on the Birmingham International Series. Recent engagements in North America have included Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Aspen Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, the Library of Congress, and the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art, as well as major venues in Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The ensemble has toured the United States with Monteverdi’s Vespers in 2010 and 2014, as well as Bach’s Bran- denburg Concertos in 2013. Based in Cleveland, Apollo’s Fire regularly sells out its subscription series, which this past fall was made available for streaming worldwide. The ensemble has re- leased 26 CDs and currently records for the Avie label. Eight of these albums have become top sellers on Billboard ’s classical chart: recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespers, Bach’s Brandenburg and Harpsichord Concertos, and Handel arias with soprano Amanda Forsythe, as well as four cross- over albums devised by Sorrell: Come to the River—An Early American Gathering , Sacrum Mys- terium—A Celtic Christmas Vespers , Sugarloaf Mountain—An Appalachian Gathering , Sephardic Journey—Wanderings of the Spanish Jews , and Songs of Orpheus with tenor Karim Sulayman, which won a Grammy in 2019. Apollo’s Fire made its Ravinia debut in 2017 and returned in 2018. VIOLIN Olivier Brault concertmaster Susanna Perry Gilmore asst. concertmaster Emi Tanabe principal Aniela Eddy Chloe Fedor Andrew Fouts Holly Piccoli Chiara Stauffer VIOLA Nicole Divall Kristen Linfante Yael Semanaud Cohen CELLO René Schiffer principal Rebecca Landell Reed Sarah Stone CONTRABASS Sue Yelanjian LUTE William Simms Brian Kay HARPSICHORD Jeannette Sorrell JEANNETTE SORRELL, artistic director and conductor One of the youngest students ever accepted into the conducting programs of Tanglewood and Aspen to work with Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington, Jeannette Sorrell also studied harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam and holds an Artist Diploma from the Ober- lin Conservatory. Sorrell won both the top prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition, comprising over 70 musicians from across Eu- rope, Israel, the United States, and Russia. Having led Apollo’s Fire since founding the ensemble in 1992, she has twice earned special recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work on early American music, an award from the American Musicological Society, two awards from the Cleveland Arts Prize, and an honorary doctorate from Case Western Univer- sity. An in-demand guest conductor with orchestras and period ensembles, Sorrell is poised to make debuts with the New York Philharmonic leading Handel’s Messiah and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic leading Bach’s Saint John Passion. She has made multiple appearances on the po- diums of the Pittsburgh and Utah Symphony Orchestras, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and New World Symphony, and has also guest-led the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kenne- dy Center as well as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis with the Saint Louis Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Florida Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, and Royal Northern Sinfonia, among other ensembles. She has also per- formed as a guest soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra. Sorrell earned particular acclaim in 2014 for substituting for conductor Richard Egarr on short notice for Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos at the Houston Early Music Festival, also playing the harpsichord solo in the fifth con- certo. She is the subject of the 2019 documentary Playing with Fire , created by Academy Award winning director Allan Miller. Soprano Erica Schuller is a versatile per- former of a broad musical repertory with a particular affinity for Baroque opera and con- cert performances, which have brought her to many stages across North America. She is a frequent soloist with Haymarket Opera in Chicago, the Boston Early Music Festival, Ars Lyrica in Houston, and New Trinity Baroque Orchestra, as well as Apollo’s Fire. Schuller earned particular praise for her portrayal of Vespetta in Telemann’s Pimpinone with Hay- market Opera, where her credits also include Oriana in Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula , Juno in Marin Marais’s Ariane et Bachus , and Li- setta in Scarlatti’s Gli equivoci nel sembiante . She was featured in Apollo’s Fire’s national touring production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in 2018, singing the roles of La Musica and Eu- ridice. Schuller recently made her debut with Chicago’s Third Coast Baroque Ensemble in Handel’s Lucrezia , and her upcoming engage- ments include performing the title role of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Haymarket Opera. Tenor Brian Giebler has earned acclaim with a repertory ranging from the role of Apollo in Handel’s Semele , which he performed on tour with The English Concert and The Clarion Choir under Harry Bicket, to concerts of Stra- vinsky’s Threni with the Cleveland Orchestra. Recent seasons have included performances as Adam in Julian Wachner and Cerise Ja- cob’s REV 23 at New York’s Prototype Festival as well as concerts of Handel’s Messiah with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carne- gie Hall and Haydn’s Harmoniemesse with the Cathedral Choral Society and Washing- ton Bach Consort Orchestra at Washington’s National Cathedral. He regularly performs with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and has also recently appeared with Boston Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Grand Rapids Symphony, Virginia Symphony Or- chestra, Syracuse’s Symphoria, Charlottesville Opera, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Handel & Haydn Society. Giebler’s recent debut solo album, A Lad’s Love , earned him a Grammy nomination. Violinist Olivier Brault hails from Terre- bonne in Québec and has brought commu- nicative enthusiasm and scholarship to con- certs throughout North America and Europe for almost 30 years. Baroque violin teacher at McGill University, he is also the director of Sonate 1704 (Québec) and the ensemble Les Goûts Réunis (Luxembourg), as well as prin- cipal violin with the Four Nations Ensemble (New York) and Les Boréades de Montréal. In 2007, he completed a doctorate at the Uni- versity of Montreal on 18th-century French music for violin and figured bass, an exper- tise that leads him to give lectures and mas- ter classes at such institutions as the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music, Paris Conser- vatory, Penn State University, and University of Michigan. He has participated in over 65 recordings, many award-winning. In 2011 he was awarded the medal of the Assemblée Nationale du Québec, and in 2016 the Cana- dian Broadcasting Corporation named him among 10 Canadian violinists that “ must be known. ” Violinist Susanna Perry Gilmore enjoys a multifaceted career as a solo artist, cham- ber musician, and orchestral concertmaster, performing on both modern and period in- struments. As concertmaster of the Omaha Symphony, she frequently appears as a solo- ist, including recent performances of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy by, Ravel’s Tzigane , Prokof- iev’s First Concerto, Mozart’s Fifth Concerto, Berg’s and Korngold’s concertos, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons , as well as orchestral solos in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben . She gave the European pre- miere of Jennifer Higdon’s The Singing Rooms for violin, choir, and orchestra in Paris at the composer’s invitation, and she has been fea- tured as a chamber music performer on the public radio shows Performance Today and A Prairie Home Companion . She holds de- grees from Oxford University and the New England Conservatory and is the violinist on Apollo’s Fire’s best-selling CD recordings Sug- arloaf Mountain and Sephardic Journey . Violinist Emi Tanabe enjoys a multifaceted career as a Baroque violinist and a solo cross- over artist. In addition to being a core mem- ber of Apollo’s Fire, she performs with the Haymarket Opera Company and Third Coast Baroque in Chicago. With Apollo’s Fire she has performed on tour across the US and Eu- rope. Her facility with global music styles and improvisation has led to many solo violin per- formances with tango, flamenco, Celtic, and jazz ensembles across the country. She has appeared with such groups as the renowned Surabhi Ensemble, the Grammy-nominated children’s music band Wendy&DB, and the theater/dinner production Teatro ZinZanni . She is a native of Japan and holds degrees in violin performance from the University of North Texas and Roosevelt University. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 24 – AUGUST 15, 2021 48 ’ I