Cleveland, Ohio, Baroque ensemble Apollo's Fire has a freshness perhaps born of its isolation from the major currents of historical performance, and with its Come to the River album of early American music in 2010 it even achieved a measure of commercial success. Sugarloaf Mountain, they point out, is not a sequel to the earlier release but might be termed a prequel: the material predates the music on Come to the River, investigating American music's Scots and Irish roots. It is very easy for classical groups to become ...
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Cleveland, Ohio, Baroque ensemble Apollo's Fire has a freshness perhaps born of its isolation from the major currents of historical performance, and with its Come to the River album of early American music in 2010 it even achieved a measure of commercial success. Sugarloaf Mountain, they point out, is not a sequel to the earlier release but might be termed a prequel: the material predates the music on Come to the River, investigating American music's Scots and Irish roots. It is very easy for classical groups to become irredeemably cutesy when performing folk material, but that does not occur here. There are three reasons for this. First is that the Baroque instrumental ensemble is a closer cousin to Celtic music than most other classical groups are, and in fact a London audience of the 18th century might well have heard these tunes in something like the arrangements offered here by director and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell. Second, Sorrell, who came of age as a musician partly in the rural South,...
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