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Baroque music’s Jeanette Sorrell conducts Florida Orchestra
“The music,” Sorrell tells the Catalyst, “is profound and moving, but it is also very accessible.”
For her third guest-conducting career visit with The Florida Orchestra, Jeanette Sorrell has planned a rich and varied program of baroque music – her professional specialty and her lifelong passion.
The first of two weekend performances, Saturday at 8 p.m., will take place in Ybor City’s historic Centro Asturiano. Sorrell and TFO will relocate to St. Petersburg’s Mahaffey Theater for a 2 p.m. concert Sunday.
Sorrell, twice the winner of the National Endowment for the Arts “American Masterpieces” grant for her work on early American music, is the founder, conductor and harpsichordist for the Ohio-based Apollo’s Fire, one of the country’s most admired baroque and early music ensembles.
She’s bringing that intimate early music aesthetic to this weekend’s performances with The Florida Orchestra.
The program: Handel, Water Music; Mozart, Overture to Marriage of Figaro; Haydn, Overture to The Uninhabited Island; Mozart, Ballet music from Idomeneo.
For full program information, and tickets, visit this link.
St. Pete Catalyst: There have not, historically, been a lot of female conductors. What kind of resistance was there when you said ‘I want to do this’?
Jeanette Sorrell: The resistance was pretty huge, to be honest. I made it to the finals of the highly competitive auditions for the Masters Program in Conducting at Juilliard. And made it through four rounds of eliminations, so I was one of the three finalists. Then the conducting professor, who was an older, German professor, told me that I should find a different profession, because orchestras will never accept a woman as a conductor. And it was ironic because his own students, who played in the Juilliard orchestra, were coming up to me in the same time and saying that they really enjoy playing for me at the audition.
You studied harpsichord – why conducting? Why go to that next level?
I started leading ensembles from the keyboard when I was about 15, in my church. So I was actually conducting ensembles from the piano before I switched over to harpsichord, which happened for me in college. But already, in high school, I just loved early music. I loved the recordings of period instruments that were coming out from Europe at that time (this was in the ‘80s).
So I was leading this ensemble, it was voices and instruments, just for fun. And I wasn’t thinking of it as a career path when I was 15. But when I was 16, my mother had this idea – she said ‘You know, Jeanette, maybe you’d like to take conducting lessons.’ And I remember saying ‘Mom, that’s a stupid idea. Why would I want to do that?’ Typical teenager. But then I thought about it for a couple months and I realized that maybe she was right. So I had a couple lessons, and I really liked it. And it came easily to me, partly because I had grown up as a serious ballet dancer, so the idea of gestures, and illustrating the music through your gestures, that was already pretty deeply ingrained in me.
And this time when I was 16 was kind of when I quit ballet. Because you reach a point with ballet that you’re either going to be a professional, and you have to give your entire life to it, or you quit. And for me, music was the higher priority. So I quit ballet, kind of sadly, but the conducting was a nice way to stay in touch with some of that side of myself. But through music – which was definitely my first love.
Can you put into words what it is about baroque music – about early music – that wound its way into your heart?
In the 17th and 18th centuries, there wasn’t such a wall between classical or art music, serious music, versus folk or popular music. They were much, much more closely related. Great composers of the time were writing deeply complex and artistic variations on popular folk dances. And so the music is profound and moving, but it is also very accessible. It is music that you can love and enjoy on the first hearing.
And as an artist I guess I’ve always wanted to bring the arts to people from all walks of life. Not just the people who are wealthy, or people who have PhDs.
Baroque music touches people immediately, from all walks of life, because it is emotional – or at least it was meant to be played in an emotional way – and the harmonic language is very simple.
Is Apollo’s Fire purely period instruments?
Yes, it is a period instrument baroque orchestra, and depending on the program we’re playing, there are anywhere from 14 to 35 musicians. Because we also play Mozart and, occasionally, Beethoven. We also have a professional chorus, known as Apollo Singers, who are all baroque specialists. They often join us when we’re doing oratorios, choral music. I’ve been blessed to tour with Apollo’s Fire to many of the most wonderful venues on both sides of the Atlantic.
These days I also do a lot of guest conducting with symphony orchestras. Last month I was with the New York Philharmonic for the third time.
How does it work, when you come in to conduct for something like The Florida Orchestra? The full contingent includes a lot of musicians – do you tell half of them to stay home?
As a guest conductor, I’m often using a reduced number of musicians. For the first half of the program, the ensemble will look smaller because it is baroque music, Handel’s Water Music. Which is very festive, though.
And then in the second half we’re doing Mozart and Haydn, and so it’ll look kind of like three-fourths of the players will be there.
