Tue 4/4 @ 7:30PM
In early March, Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s baroque orchestra, premieres a new program created by the ensemble’s founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell. Exile & Resilience: Music of the Jewish & African Diasporas explores how both Jews and Africans used music to maintain their culture heritage and identities as they migrated (and were forcibly dispersed) throughout the world.
“I have long been fascinated by the effects of exile on the human soul,” says Sorrell, who says she was inspired by her discovery just a few years ago of her father’s Jewish roots and his exile story. Exile & Resilience draws on similar themes that animated her previous programs, 2014’s Sephardic Journey and 2018’s O Jerusalem!
The new program includes music by Jewish baroque composer Salamone Rossi and Jewish-inspired composer Benedetto Marcello, interspersed with songs, dances, and prayers from Ashkenazy, Sephardic, and North African traditions.
Featured performers include soprano Polina Skovoroda Shepherd, tenors Jacob Perry and Haitham Haidar, baritone Jeffrey Strauss, clarinetist Marlin Shepherd, and Daphna Mor on recorder, ney (a Middle Eastern flute) and vocals, among the company of two dozen Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian and African-American artists.
The ensemble will have one final performance at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Tuesday April 4 as the kickoff to its 6th international tour. That concert will be filmed for later screening on classical music channel MEDICI.TV. Their tour will include three programs — Exile & Resilience, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons — Rediscovered, and Blues Café 1610 — and take them to the UK, Germany, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Palo Alto.
For more information and tickets, go here apollosfire.org.