Apollo's Fire, The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra is a popular and critically acclaimed[1] period-instrument ensemble specializing in early music (Renaissance, Baroque and early Classical) based in Cleveland, Ohio. The ensemble unites a select pool of early music specialists from throughout North America and Europe. Under the direction of Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell, the ensemble has been praised internationally for a fresh and vibrant approach to baroque performance, and for creative and innovative programming.
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Apollo's Fire was founded in 1992 Jeannette Sorrell, with the assistance of Roger Wright, then Artistic Administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra (now with the BBC). The orchestra received a startup grant from the Cleveland Foundation in 1992, and made its debut to critical acclaim in June of that year. Since then, Apollo’s Fire has performed at such venues as the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institution, the Library of Congress, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Michigan, and the New World Symphony Orchestra’s Baroque Festival in Miami.
Apollo’s Fire is frequently broadcast on National Public Radio, including SymphonyCast, NPR World of Opera, and Performance Today, as well as many holdiay specials. The ensemble can also be heard on Britain’s BBC, Canada’s CBC Radio 2, and the European Broadcasting Union.
Together with Jeannette Sorrell, Apollo’s Fire received the 1995 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, given for an outstanding project involving the collaboration of scholars and performers, and was awarded the 1998 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for Classical Music.
Apollo's Fire also has a crossover/folk wing, specializing in traditional music of the British Isles and North America, performed on period instruments in an historically informed aesthetic. The ensemble was awarded a major grant through the NEA American Masterpieces initiative in 2009, for Jeannette Sorrell's innovative crossover program, "Come to the River: An Early American Gathering."