Orpheus Weeps
Early Italian Songs of Love & Loss
August 18August 19, 2017

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Karim Sulayman sings Monteverdi’s sublime “Si dolce è il tormento” (How Sweet the Torment) from Apollo’s Fire’s 2015 performance of “Blues Café 1610”

Orpheus, the tragic hero who lost his beloved Euridice, was the inspiration for many Italian composers of the 17th century. Favorite tenor Karim Sulayman is joined by Apollo’s Fire instrumentalists on strings and lutes for poignant songs of love and loss by Monteverdi, Caccini, and their contemporaries.

There is NO Pre-Concert Talk before this performance.


  • KARIM SULAYMAN
    KARIM SULAYMAN
    tenor
  • JULIE ANDRIJESKI
    JULIE ANDRIJESKI
    violin
  • JOHANNA NOVOM
    JOHANNA NOVOM
    violin
  • KARINA SCHMITZ
    KARINA SCHMITZ
    viola

  • RENÉ SCHIFFER
    RENÉ SCHIFFER
    cello
  • WILLIAM SIMMS
    WILLIAM SIMMS
    lute
  • BRIAN KAY
    BRIAN KAY
    lute & tenor vocals
  • JEANNETTE SORRELL
    JEANNETTE SORRELL
    conductor & harpsichordist

Friday, August 18, 2017, 8:00PM
CLEVELAND Institute of Music (Mixon Hall)
Saturday, August 19, 2017, 6:00PM
AKRON Woman’s City Club
SPECIAL EVENT: Performance preceded by wine and hors d’oeuvres, and followed by a Q&A, coffee and sweets. Please call AF at 216.320.0012 x 6 for tickets to this event.
Karim Sulayman,tenor

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

KARIM SULAYMAN
tenor

is consistently praised for his sensitive musicianship, vivid portrayals, and beautiful voice. With a vast repertoire that spans from the Renaissance to contemporary music, he has firmly established himself as a sophisticated and versatile artist of his generation. Recent highlights include engagements at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Aldeburgh Festival and Snape Proms, the Casals Festival, Aspen Music Festival and the International Bach Festival. Mr. Sulayman recently completed three seasons at the Marlboro Music Festival collaborating with Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode, and continues to focus on championing vocal chamber music under the auspices of Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, Cleveland ChamberFest, among other esteemed presenters, and earlier this season performed programs of French chamber works at the Roman River Festival in the UK which were recorded by the BBC. Also in the 2016-2017 season he debuted with Houston Grand Opera as Albert in the world premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s Some Light Emerges.

This season he looks forward to debuts with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center in Messiah, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra as Testo in Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, his professional acting debut in Karin Coonrod’s groundbreaking production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Off Broadway), and to a US national tour as the title role in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra, along with the release of his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus, of 17th-century Italian composers on the AVIE label. Next season he plays the role of Claudio Monteverdi at Stockholm’s beloved Drottningholms Slottsteater in the world premiere of The Voice of Europa. He also appears and sings “I go on” from Mass in the upcoming ARTE documentary Leonard Bernstein – The Composer, to be aired throughout Europe in the summer of 2018 and subsequently released on DVD.

His growing discography includes the title role in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and two releases for NAXOS in works of Philidor and Grétry, as well as the release of Sephardic Journey with Apollo’s Fire on AVIE which debuted at the Number 2 slot on the Billboard World Music Chart and Number 7 on the Classical Chart. He is also featured on the album of Jonathan Dawe’s 21st-century chamber works, Piercing are the Darts, on the Furious Artisans label and on the future EP release of Matt Frey’s new chamber opera 111 Heavy with the ensemble Hotel Elefant.

Mr. Sulayman’s musical education began with violin studies at age three, and years as a boy alto soloist, which included performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti and the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Rice University and also studied improvisation at the Second City Training Center in Chicago.

WEBSITE

JULIE ANDRIJESKI
violin

Lauded for her “invigorating verve and imagination” (Washington Post), Julie Andrijeski is nationally admired as one of the few leading baroque violinists to have mastered the art of baroque dance. Her unique musical performance style is greatly influenced by her knowledge and skilled performance of baroque dance. Ms. Andrijeski is a full-time Lecturer in the Music Department at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches early music performance practices, baroque dance, and directs the Case/CIM Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles. She has led workshops for the Oberlin Conservatory (as Visiting Assistant Professor), Indiana University (as Visiting Faculty – Violin Instructor), Juilliard, the University of Southern California, and the University of Colorado – Boulder. During the summers, Ms. Andrijeski teaches baroque violin and dance at several festivals including Oberlin (BPI), Madison (MEMF), and Vancouver, BC (BIP).

She is the Artistic Director of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and holds principal positions with New York State Baroque (Concertmaster), Quicksilver (Co-Director with baroque violinists Robert Mealy), Apollo’s Fire (principal player), Les Délices, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and The King’s Noyse. She holds a D.M.A. in Early Music from Case Western Reserve University, an M.M. from Northwestern University and a B.M. from the University of Denver. Her recordings can be found on the Dorian, AVIE, Koch, Acis Productions, Centaur, and Musica Omnia labels.

JOHANNA NOVOM
violin

appears as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician with period ensembles across the US and internationally. First-prize winner of the American Bach Soloists’ International Young Artists Competition in 2008, she holds a Master’s degree in baroque violin from Oberlin Conservatory and was a Yale Baroque Ensemble fellow in 2010-2011 under the directly of Robert Mealy. Based in Brooklyn, NY, she currently performs with Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Carmel Bach Festival, Clarion Music Society, Washington Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, TENET, the Sebastian Chamber Players, New York Baroque Incorporated, and ACRONYM, among others. She is a founding member of the Diderot String Quartet, a new ensemble dedicated to the performance of 18th and early 19th century repertoire. 

KARINA SCHMITZ
viola

holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her early music studies began at Oberlin Conservatory with Marilyn McDonald, Miho Hashizume, and David Breitman. She continued her training in the Apollo’s Fire Apprentice Program while serving as Concertmaster of the Case Baroque Orchestra. She is currently Principal Second Violin with Tempesta di Mare in Philadelphia, Assistant Principal Violist of the Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra, and violist with the Coriolan String Quartet, a period ensemble based in Boston.

RENÉ SCHIFFER
cello

is a composer in historical styles as well as a leading baroque cellist in the international early music scene. A protégé of the great baroque cellist Anner Bijlsma, he toured internationally for 16 years as a member of La Petite Bande under Sigiwald Kuijken. He has also performed with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), Les Musiciens du Louvre (Marc Minkowski), and in over 50 projects with Tafelmusik (Toronto). His compositions and reconstructions in historical styles have been performed by orchestras in North America, Europe and Australia, and appear on several Apollo’s Fire CD recordings. He can be heard on the Harmonia Mundi, Philips, Virgin Classics, Erato, Sony and AVIE labels.

WILLIAM SIMMS
lute

William Simms is a graduate of The College of Wooster and the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He is an active performer on the classical guitar, lute and theorbo. He has performed with the Cleveland Opera, Apollo’s Fire, the Baltimore Consort and the Violins of Lafayette. He has recorded on the Dorian, Electra and Centaur labels. In addition to his teaching duties at Hood, he is a faculty member at Mount St. Mary’s University and the Interlochen Arts Academy.

BRIAN KAY
lute & tenor vocals

is a modern-day troubadour. He holds a Master’s degree in music from Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied lute and theorbo. He specializes in historical plucked instruments and ancient songs of various world traditions. He is a songwriter and poet, and also paints and plays a variety of percussion and wind instruments. Cleveland Classical.com called him “far-ranging,” “brilliant,” and “exciting,” and Early Music America called his work “phenomenal.” His newest album, Three Ravens, was released in January 2015.

JEANNETTE SORRELL
conductor & harpsichordist

“Under the inspired leadership of Jeannette Sorrell, Apollo’s Fire has become one of the pre-eminent period-instrument ensembles, causing one to hear baroque material anew.”
–THE INDEPENDENT, London

Jeannette Sorrell is recognized internationally as a leading creative voice among early-music conductors. She has been credited by the U.K.’s BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE for forging “a vibrant, life-affirming approach to the re-making of early music… a seductive vision of musical authenticity.” 

Hailed as “one of the world’s finest Baroque specialists” (ST. LOUIS DISPATCH), Sorrell was one of the youngest students ever accepted to the prestigious conducting courses of the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals. She studied conducting under Robert Spano, Roger Norrington and Leonard Bernstein, and harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. She won both First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition, competing against over 70 harpsichordists from Europe, Israel, the U.S., and the Soviet Union.

Sorrell founded Apollo’s Fire in 1992. Since then, she and the ensemble have built one of the largest audiences of any baroque orchestra in North America. She has led AF in sold-out concerts at London’s BBC Proms and London’s Wigmore Hall, Madrid’s Royal Theatre (Teatro Real), the Grand Théâtre de l’Opéra in Bordeaux, the Aldeburgh Festival (UK), the Tanglewood Festival, Boston’s Early Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Library of Congress, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), among others.

As a guest conductor, Sorrell has worked with many of the leading American symphony orchestras. Her debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2013 as conductor and soloist in the complete Brandenburg Concertos was met with standing ovations every night and hailed as “an especially joyous occasion” (PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW). She has also appeared as conductor or conductor/soloist with the New World Symphony (Miami), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis with the St. Louis Symphony, Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), the Omaha Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, and has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra as guest keyboard artist. In 2014 Ms. Sorrell filled in for British conductor Richard Egarr on 5 days’ notice, leading the complete Brandenburg Concertos and playing the harpsichord solo in Brandenburg No. 5 for the closing concert of the Houston Early Music Festival. In 2015 she returned to the Pittsburgh Symphony as conductor/soloist.

Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire have released 24 commercial CDs, of which six have been bestsellers on the BILLBOARD classical chart. Her recordings include the complete Brandenburg Concerti and harpsichord concerti of Bach (with Sorrell as harpsichord soloist and director), which was praised by the LONDON TIMES as “a swaggering version… brilliantly played by Sorrell.” She has also released four discs of Mozart and was hailed as “a near-perfect Mozartian” by FANFARE RECORD MAGAZINE. Other recordings include Handel’s Messiah, the Monteverdi Vespers and four creative crossover projects: Come to the River – An Early American Gathering; Sacrum Mysterium – A Celtic Christmas Vespers; Sugarloaf Mountain – An Appalachian Gathering, and most recently, Sephardic Journey – Wanderings of the Spanish Jews.

Sorrell has attracted national attention and awards for creative programming. She holds an honorary doctorate from Case Western University, two special awards from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work on early American music, and an award from the American Musicological Society. Passionate about guiding the next generation of performers, Ms. Sorrell has led many baroque projects for students at Oberlin Conservatory.

WEBSITE

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