Apollo’s Fire and founder-director Jeannette Sorrell celebrate their 30th anniversary with their first recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring rising star Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana.

Grammy Award-winning baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire and its founder-director Jeannette Sorrell have blazed trails in the world of historically informed performance with pioneering programming, presentational flair and an entrepreneurial spirit, qualities that have earned them eight Billboard chart-topping albums and more than 7 million views on YouTube.

Their latest release, which launches the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season, is destined to soar to similar heights: the ensemble’s first recording of the perennial audience favourite, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring the phenomenal Spanish-born fiddler Francisco Fullana. Frequently performed at Apollo’s Fire home base in Cleveland, Ohio and on their international tours, “Sorrell’s vivid approach to the pictorial elements make these familiar works seem freshly minted, full of astonishing incident”, according to Seen & Heard International. Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been dubbed a “rising star” by BBC Music Magazine, and an “amazing talent” by conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

The Four Seasons is the first of five releases spread throughout the season celebrating Apollo’s Fire’s milestone 30th anniversary.

Named for the classical god of music and healing, Apollo’s Fire is a Grammy-winning ensemble based in Cleveland, Ohio. The period-instrument orchestra was founded by award-winning harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell and is dedicated to the baroque ideal that music should evoke the various Affekts or passions in the listeners. Apollo’s Fire is a collection of creative artists who share Sorrell’s passion for drama and rhetoric.

Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana is one of the first international solo violinists to fully embrace and absorb the baroque language of historical performance. Hailed as a “rising star” (BBC Music Magazine), he is the winner of four international violin competitions as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant. His Carnegie Hall recital debut was noted for its “joy and playfulness in collaboration... it was perfection” (New York Concert Review).