"Led by a brilliant music director and harpsichordist, Jeannette Sorrell, the ensemble exudes stylish energy...a blend of scholarship and visceral intensity."
Gramophone

"The group’s semi-staged performance, lead by music director Jeannette Sorrell, proved revelatory, with impassioned singing and playing bringing Bach’s score to life with contemporary immediacy."
[Bach’s St John Passion, Ojai Festival] Opera News

"Apollo’s Fire is a superb chamber ensemble that pairs vigor with finesse, enlisting period instruments to play baroque fare in a rigorously informed style."
The Washington Post

"Sorrell and her players, as well as her sensational chorus, Apollo’s Singers, make contact with music on both visceral and intellectual levels, and the results are intoxicating... When Sorrell arrives onstage, she grabs the attention of her musicians, who respond with missionary enthusiasm, and her listeners...The ensemble’s technical standards have reached a level that only a few other Baroque orchestras can match."
Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Apollo’s Fire is one of those rare ensembles that is so fine it calls attention not to itself, but to the music being played... Virtuosity runs rampant among the musicians, starting with Sorrell herself."
Indianapolis Star

"...this Mozart verged on the revelatory, especially Sorrell’s account of the Symphony No.40.… Each movement had a sense of inner life and drama, and every instrumental line could be heard. The finale was the explosive, stormy creation Mozart must have intended it to be."
Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Apollo’s Fire doesn’t live in the past. The music it plays it old, but its interpretations and programs give audiences a fresh view...Vivaldi has been cheated by performances that aren’t at the level of Apollo’s Fire. Vivaldi’s writing can sound mechanical, but this performance was full of drama."
Akron Beacon Journal

"...the essence of Apollo's Fire: joy onstage that generates joy in the audience."
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The entire account [of Monteverdi’s Vespers] was an Apollo’s Fire triumph. Sorrell must be one of the best conductors around in this repertoire. In the moments of communal outpouring, the glory of Monteverdi’s accomplishment couldn’t have been more radiant or moving."
Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The growing stature of Apollo’s Fire, both in concert and in the recording studio, is a testament to the imagination and flair of the period-instrument ensemble’s music director, Jeannette Sorrell."
Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The group had amazingly clear musical direction. We must give credit to Jeannette Sorrell for her fresh and lively vision... Not only does Apollo’s Fire play with fire and passion, but their musical offering is nectar of the gods. Their playing was super-animated and electric."
Los Alamos Monitor

"Messiah was an uplifting triumph for Apollo’s Fire. The beloved oratorio glowed with freshness and imagination... in the hands of music director Jeannette Sorrell and her splendid ensemble of period instruments. The true heroine of the evening was Sorrell. Moving gracefully from podium to harpsichord, she paced the performance expertly, realized continuo parts with imagination, coaxed buoyant playing from the orchestra and inspired singing from the chorus."
Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Scholarly, yet vastly entertaining...The blend of music, history and sociology was so seamless that a listener could sit back and absorb the avalanche of influences and idioms without feeling as if trapped in a lecture. That was the beauty of the artistry. Apollo’s Fire continues to find splendid ways to keep its artistic flames hot."
Cleveland Plain Dealer
 

Taking its name from the classical god of music and the sun, Apollo's Fire is dedicated to the performance of 17th and 18th century music on the period instruments for which it was written. The ensemble unites a select pool of renowned early music specialists from throughout North America and Europe.

Apollo's Fire was founded in 1992 by Jeannette Sorrell, with the assistance of Roger Wright, then Artistic Administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra (now with the BBC). The orchestra received a startup grant from the Cleveland Foundation in 1992, and made its debut to critical acclaim in June of that year. Since then, Apollo’s Fire has performed in Toronto, Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Columbus, Detroit, Pittsburgh, with the American Bach Project in Milwaukee, and the New World Symphony’s Baroque Festival in Miami. In 2004 Apollo’s Fire appeared at two prestigious international festivals: the Gilmore International Festival in Michigan, and the Ojai Festival (CA) presenting Bach’s St John Passion with "stunning eloquence."

Apollo’s Fire is frequently broadcast on National Public Radio and can also be heard on Britain’s BBC, Canada’s CBC, European Community Radio, and in Northeast Ohio on WCLV and WKSU. Apollo’s Fire has been featured on several national holiday broadcasts on NPR as well as NPR’s World of Opera and SymphonyCast. This fall the orchestra will feature in the live broadcast of the 40th anniversary celebration of WCLV’s Symphony at Seven. Next summer Apollo’s Fire makes its European debut with four chamber concerts in Italy.

Apollo’s Fire has received international critical acclaim for its six recordings on the Canadian label Eclectra. Now recording for KOCH International Classics, the orchestra’s recent releases include Mozart’s Haffner and Jupiter symphonies, Scarborough Fayre, and a re-issue of the popular Noels and Carols disc. Recordings of Mozart piano concertos and music by Telemann are scheduled for release in 2005.

Together with Jeannette Sorrell, Apollo’s Fire received the 1995 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, given for an outstanding project involving the collaboration of scholars and performers, and was awarded the 1998 Northern Ohio Live Achievement Award for Classical Music.