Tue 12/3 @ 7PM
Wed 12/4 @ 7PM
Sat 12/7 @ 7:30PM
Sun 12/8 @ 3PM
Apollo’s Fire refers to its upcoming program Wassail! An Irish-Appalachian Christmas as “Music of the past, a story for today.” Apollo’s Fire’s founder/artistic director Jeannette Sorrell, creator of the show, describes its main theme is immigrants and refugees looking, like Joseph and Mary in the gospels, for a safe place to land.
“The Biblical Mary and Joseph were vulnerable migrants who were forced to travel for political reasons,” she says. “They were ordered to leave their home, even though Mary was about to give birth. That story is echoed many years later in the Irish Potato Famine of the 1850s, when impoverished Irishmen forced to leave because they could not pay their rent to their British overloads. And sadly, it is echoed today as Ukrainian and Middle Eastern refugees are forced from their homes.”
She adds “I hope this program will help us reflect on the situation of migrants and refugees today.”
And, we might add, immigrants from countries such as Venezuela and Haiti, fleeing violence and looking for economic opportunity in the U.S.
In the program, which reprises and reworks the one they originally presented in 2022 and 2023, we hear families and friends gathered for music and storytelling in Ireland on Christmas night, and follow them on their journey across the ocean to America. This new version includes a group of children joining the cast of 15 Apollo’s Fire artists including vocalist Fiona Gillespie, hammered dulcimer player Tina Bergmann, Irish flutist Kathie Stewart, violinists Alan Choo and Emi Tanabe, and Sorrell leading from the harpsichord.
Featured child soloists are 16-year-old Rosie Horvath and 11-year-old Federica Salvagni, joined by Apollo’s Musettes, singers from schools across northeast Ohio.
The performances take place at St. Noel Catholic Church in Willoughby Hills on Tuesday December 3; at the Bath Church UCC on Wednesday December 4; at Chagrin Falls Performing Arts Center on Saturday December 7; and at Avon Performing Arts Center on Sunday December 8.
Wassail and cookies will be served in the lobby before each performance. Get tickets here.
Willoughby Hills, OH 44094
Akron, OH 44333