The list of accomplishments by Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire baroque chamber orchestra is long. Founded in the early 1990 by artistic director/conductor Jeannette Sorrell, it just launched its 35th season. It’s established a beachhead in Chicago as well as Cleveland, toured Europe, played at prestigious festivals such as Tanglewood and even won a Grammy.
In that time, it’s also released two dozen albums, and a new one drops this week. It features a composer beloved by their audiences, whose music they have recorded before: Johann Sebastian Bach. The new recording features a new take on his B Minor Mass, completed in 1749, with 24 instrumentalists playing period instruments and a 22-voice choir, including five soloists.
“While music is always an emotional journey, I feel that Bach’s Mass is an exceptionally cathartic and healing one for our time,” says Sorrell. “The music theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries emphasized music’s role in moving the Affekts or emotional moods of the listeners. Undertaking that journey with Bach’s epic B Minor Mass is both a joy and an honor.”
She adds, “I’ve always felt that the B Minor Mass is Bach’s vision of peace. He completed its composition in the year before his death, and it ends with the choir repeatedly chanting ‘Dona nobis pacem’ – ‘Grant us peace’. In the troubled world in which we live today, with wars and refugees across the planet, I think that Bach’s wish for peace speaks directly to us all. He was famous for saying that the purpose of all music is the refreshment of the spirit. And I think we all need that today.”
The album is officially available on October 23, 2026, and can be ordered HERE.
apollosfire.org/product/bach-mass-in-b-minor/