2324 wassail – Apollo's Fire

TINA BERGMANN

Tina Bergmann, hammered dulcimer, was hailed by Pete Seeger as “the best hammered dulcimer player I’ve heard in my life.” A fourth-generation musician, Ms. Bergmann began playing music at age eight, learning the mountain dulcimer from her mother in the aural tradition and learning the hammered dulcimer at the knee of West Virginia-native builder and performer Loy Swiger. Demonstrating gifts for both performance and teaching, she has been a featured performer across the United States, performing solo; as a duo with her husband, bassist Bryan Thomas; with her stringband Hu$hmoney; and as a featured soloist with Apollo’s Fire and Canadian early music group, La Nef.

FIONA GILLESPIE

Fiona Gillespie is a folk and classically-trained singer, songwriter, composer, and music educator. Raised in a family of traditional Celtic musicians Fiona grew up step dancing, singing ballads, and playing the Irish whistle, on which she competed nationally and internationally until 2006. She holds degrees in voice performance from Westminster Choir College (BM) and the University of North Texas (MM).

Fiona’s debut, full-length compositional recording with collaborator Elliot Cole released with a premier performance in New York City on October 31, 2021. The half-hour folk-rock cantata, scored for voices and 12-piece band of historical, modern, and electronic instruments, recreates the ancient Scottish ballad of Tam Lin. Her album of Scottish folk songs arranged by composers of the Viennese School, “Wisps in the Dell” released in 2019, and a “prequel” disc, “The Gallant David Rizzio” releases in 2022, all three of which are with the ensemble Makaris. As a featured performer Fiona’s recent and upcoming engagements include The Baroque Orchestra of Colorado, Musica Sierra, Carmel Bach Festival, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Labyrinth Baroque Ensemble, The Washington National Cathedral, Mountainside Baroque, The Academy of Sacred Drama, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Fire and Grace, and ALKEMIE. She sings regularly as a professional chorister with Skylark Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, Kinnara Ensemble, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, and St. Tikhon’s Choir, and with churches in both New York City and Philadelphia.

Fiona is a co-founder and manager of the band The Chivalrous Crickets, the Baroque-Folk crossover duo, Disordering the Attic. She teaches voice at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, where she has led opera workshop and music directed main stage productions (recent: Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, 2019). Fiona taught voice at Lycoming College from 2013-2017, as well as directed opera (stage & music: Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel), co-taught courses on Baroque music and art that traveled to Italy, Germany, and Austria, and helped coordinate and lead choir tours to Washington DC, Florida, and China. She has led folksong arranging and group singing workshops at the Big Sur Fiddle Camp, and for Bethlehem PA’s Celtic Cultural Alliance.

SUSANNA PERRY GILMORE

Violinist Susanna Perry Gilmore enjoys a multifaceted career as solo artist, chamber musician, and orchestral concertmaster. Performing on both modern and period instruments and versatile in diverse styles from classical to fiddling, she is hailed as a player who is both “thrilling and sensitive” by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, “luminous and hypnotic” by the Omaha World-Herald, and “authentic with exquisite good taste” and “rich in tone, bringing musical depth and a human touch” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Ms. Gilmore frequently appears as a soloist with the Omaha Symphony on the Master Works, Joslyn, and Symphony Pops series. Recent performances include the Scottish Fantasy by Max Bruch and Celtic Journey: Magic of the Emerald Isle. In recent seasons Omaha audiences have heard Ms. Gilmore perform the Tzigane by Ravel, Berg’s Violin Concerto, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5, and the Korngold Violin Concerto as well as major concertmaster solos such as Rimsky Korsakov Scheherazade and Strauss Ein Heldenleben.

After beginning her career as a chamber player, at the age of twenty-six Ms. Gilmore became concertmaster of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. She joined the Omaha Symphony as concertmaster in 2011. Since 2014 she has been a frequent soloist and co-concertmaster on baroque violin and fiddle with the acclaimed period instrument ensemble and Grammy Award winner Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), with whom she tours nationally and internationally and appears on the CD Sugarloaf Mountain: An Appalachian Gathering (Billboard Top 10 classical bestseller), the CD Sephardic Journey: Wanderings of the Spanish Jews (Billboard Top 10 classical bestseller), and Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain.

Ms. Gilmore holds a Bachelor’s degree from Oxford University (UK), where she studied musicology and performed both early music and symphonic repertoire while studying privately with Yfrah Neaman. She spent a post-graduate year in the Advanced Solo Studies Program at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Upon returning to the United States, she earned a Master’s in Violin Performance from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with James Buswell. Prior to her studies in England, Ms. Gilmore studied with Christian Teal at the Blair School of Music in the pre-college program and as a child began her violin studies with Mimi Zweig at Indiana University. Ms. Gilmore learned to play Celtic fiddle in her youth through sitting in on Irish sessions during her years living in Nashville and England.

When not working as a classical and baroque violinist and fiddler, Ms. Gilmore spends time with her two daughters, Katy and Zoe, and her husband, Viseslav Drincic. She performs on a 1776 Joseph Odoardi violin.

CAITLIN HEDGE

Violist, violinist, and folk musician based in Youngstown, Ohio, Caitlin Hedge serves as Principal Viola of Opera Western Reserve and the Warren Philharmonic, and performs with the Youngstown Symphony, Wheeling Symphony, Butler County Symphony, Ashland Symphony, and Mansfield Symphony. She has performed with Celtic Woman, Evanescence, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and has won several awards for her fiddle playing, including first place in the 2013 Edinboro Scottish Highland Games Regional Competition. Her locally-based Greek blues/Americana group, Demos Papadimas and His Band, have recorded three studio albums together and were featured artists on Canton Symphony Orchestra’s 2019 Divergent Sound Series. Ms. Hedge is an alum of Youngstown State University and Baldwin Wallace University, and has served on faculty at YSU’s Dana School of Music and the Aurora School of Music. She is currently pursuing her MA in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University, studying baroque violin with Julie Andrijeski. She will release her debut album of original folk music in 2022.

ANNA O’CONNELL

Anna O’Connell is a soprano and harpist who works to recreate the lost traditions of the harpist troubadours. Her love of Celtic music was cemented by a visit to Ireland at a young age, where the fascinating mix of concerts (in a castle and in the streets of Dublin), monuments, and museums led her lifelong fascination with harps. She has researched the history of self-accompaniment with harps ranging from medieval to modern folk instruments. Her self-accompanied repertoire includes medieval, renaissance, and early baroque songs from Italy, Germany, and the British Isles. She is currently completing doctoral studies in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University.

Anna has sung as soloist with the Hong Kong Early Music Society and the Maui Chamber Orchestra. In Cleveland, she sings with the Trinity Cathedral Chamber Singers and the Cleveland Chamber Choir. She holds degrees from the University of Southern California and Providence College. She studies voice with Ellen Hargis and Dina Kuznetsova, and historical harps with Maxine Eilander. Her Ithaca-based duo, Gothic Fire, specializes in Medieval and Renaissance music performed on rebec and harp.

JEANNETTE SORRELL

“A resplendent performance… breathtaking. The production belonged entirely to Ms. Sorrell.”
–THE NEW YORK TIMES

GRAMMY®-winning conductor Jeannette Sorrell is recognized internationally as one of today’s most compelling interpreters of Baroque and Classical repertoire,
and a leading creative voice in the exploration of historical folk music traditions. She is the subject of the 2019 documentary by Academy award-winning director
Allan Miller, titled PLAYING WITH FIRE. She studied conducting at the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals under Leonard Bernstein and Roger
Norrington and harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. She won First Prize in the Spivey International Harpsichord Competition, competing against over 70 harpsichordists from 4 continents.

She is the founder of APOLLO’S FIRE and has led the renowned ensemble as conductor and harpsichord soloist at London’s BBC Proms, Carnegie Hall, Madrid’s Royal Theatre, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Tanglewood and Boston Early Music festivals, among others. Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire have released 29 commercial CDs, including 11 bestsellers on the Billboard classical chart and a 2019 GRAMMY® winner.

In demand as a guest conductor with symphony orchestras and period ensembles alike, Sorrell has led the New York Philharmonic (Handel’s Messiah), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Bach’s St. John Passion), the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, and has repeatedly conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Utah Symphony, and New World Symphony. She has also led the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Opera St Louis with the St Louis Symphony, and Philharmonia Baroque (San Francisco), among others.

Hailed as “a masterful musical storyteller” (SEEN & HEARD INTERNATIONAL), Sorrell has attracted national attention and awards for creative programming, particularly exploring the crossroads of early music and folk traditions. With Apollo’s Fire, she is a two-time recipient of the prestigious “American Masterpieces” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the research and production of early American music. Her awards include an honorary doctorate from Case Western Reserve University and the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, given for her work in reconstructing early American repertoire. As a teenager, she lived in the rural Shenandoah Valley, where she grew to love Appalachian music and Southern harmony. In her programs exploring folk traditions, she tries to help American listeners reconnect with the beauty of our shared roots as immigrants.

EMI TANABE

Violinist Emi Tanabe enjoys a multi-faceted career as a baroque violinist and a solo crossover artist. In addition to being a core member of Apollo’s Fire, she performs with the Haymarket Opera Company and Third Coast Baroque in Chicago. With Apollo’s Fire she has performed on tour across the U.S. and Europe. Her facility with world music styles and improvisation has led to many solo violin performances with Tango, Flamenco, Celtic, and Jazz ensembles across the country. She has appeared with such groups as the renowned Surabhi Ensemble, the GRAMMY®-nominated children’s music band Wendy&DB, and the theater/dinner production “Teatro ZinZanni.” Emi is a native of Japan, and holds degrees in violin performance from the University of North Texas and Roosevelt University.

“The U.S.A.’s hottest baroque band.” –CLASSICAL MUSIC MAGAZINE (UK)