Apollo's Fire will bring passion for music to full 'Affekt' at Tuckerman Hall

WORCESTER — When the the award-winning young harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrel founded the Cleveland-based early music group Apollo's Fire in 1992, she wasn't sure how long the flames were going to last.

"My particular focus with Apollo's Fire is trying to revive the way Baroque composers envisioned their music to be performed," Sorrell said of the group named for the classical god of music and the sun.

Her own envisioning, however, included, "I thought, well, I'll do this for a couple of years until it dies, then I'll find something else to do."

Instead, Apollo's Fire, which plays on period instruments, is returning to Worcester as part of its 30th anniversary season with a concert at 8 p.m. March 25 presented by Music Worcester. The program will feature works by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi.

"Vivaldi was the composer who Bach seems to have studied the most and it's fun to play their music side by side and in some instances we can see how Vivaldi influenced Bach," Sorrell said.

But the concert is also "full of fire and virtuosos," she said of the playing.

Baroque composers envisioned their music being played that way, she said. A prevailing belief in the Baroque period was encapsulated in a German word, “Affekt,” meaning the music lifting the emotions, Sorrell noted. The performer’s role was to evoke a particular Affekt or emotional state in the audience using every possible means to cast a spell, including physical gestures and expressions as well as musical.

Sorrell and the musicians of Apollo's Fire take the same approach to burning a nerve. She has said, "If at the end of two hours, the audience is moved to tears, or joy, or laughter, or prayer, then we have done a good night’s work."

It's an approach that has had a clear effect, so to speak.

"What we're seeing is audiences really respond to this," Sorrell said.

3 decades of experience

Over the course of 30 years, "I learned a lot along the way, since I knew nothing when I started," she said. Still, "We're pretty happy that we've built one of the three largest audiences in the country for Baroque music in Cleveland."

In its home-base, Apollo's Fire sells about 15,000 tickets a a year. A Grammy-winning orchestra, Apollo’s Fire has also traveled extensively and performed sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms, the Royal Theatre of Madrid, the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and more.

"We have millions of views of our YouTube videos. I think this music does speak to everybody and our musicians are really animated on stage," Sorrell said.

The March 25 concert will be Apollo Fire's third recent visit to Worcester — and Tuckerman Hall.

"We love that we're coming to Tuckerman Hall. It's really quite charming," Sorrell said.

In 2018, Apollo's Fire came to Tuckerman Hall with its chamber orchestra for a program titled "A Night at Bach’s Coffeehouse," a selection of pieces and composers Bach might have programmed at his weekly concerts with the Collegium Musicum at Gottfried Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse in Leipzig, circa 1730.

The performance lit up the stage. "It was just jaw-dropping musicianship," recalled Adrien C. Finlay, executive director of Music Worcester.

Sold out show commonplace

Apollo's Fire doesn't exclusively play Baroque music. In January 2020, it was back at Tuckerman Hall with a program titled "Sugarloaf Mountain: An Appalachian Gathering," consisting of ballads, reel and fiddle tunes that came from the British Isles long ago, mingled with Southern hymns and African spirituals in the hills of Virginia, and created the music called Appalachian. The concert sold out.

When the pandemic hit shortly afterward, Apollo's Fire, inspired by the success of its YouTube videos, began an online "Worldwide Watch-at-Home" series of full concert videos on demand. There are also Zoom pre-concert talks.

"Music has played a very important role in the pandemic," Sorrell said. "We had subscribers up 30 percent. It was sort of amazing that that happened during the pandemic."

Once again Affekt proved effective. "They (audiences) like to see the interaction with the musicians and the facial expressions," Sorrell said.

Apollo's Fire was able to get back to touring starting last summer. The night before Apollo's Fire comes to Tuckerman Hall it will be at Carnegie Hall.

"We're actually touring quite a bit," Sorrell said.

Back home in Cleveland, Apollo's Fire has a Community Access Initiative which includes putting on some concerts in restaurants, Sorrell said. "We go into the schools and we have something we call 'Family Nights'" — a regular subscription concert where some parents and their children can come for free.

There can be lasting effects with such approaches. While the term "Baroque music" may sound daunting to the uninitiated, "If we can manage to get someone to come once to a concert then they're hooked and they become subscribers," Sorrell said.

As for the next 30 years, "All we can do is continue to bring joy and inspiration to people in every way that we can," she said.

Apollo's Fire, presented by Music Worcester

When: 8 p.m. March 25

Where: Tuckerman Hall, corner of Tuckerman and Salisbury streets, Worcester

How much: $55; $17.50 students; $7.50 youth. Proof of full vaccination and wearing of masks required.

For more info go to musicworcester.org

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Apollo's Fire will bring passion for music to full "Affekt" at Tuckerman Hall