Award-winning harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell 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.” She takes her inspiration from the 17th-century concept of “affekt,” in which the goal of the musician is to move the emotions of the listeners. Sorrell makes use of baroque dramatic devices, including rhetoric and harmonic tension and release, to bring baroque repertoire to life in a highly personal and communicative way. 

Sorrell made her much-acclaimed debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in April as conductor and soloist in the complete Brandenburg Concertos.  With standing ovations every night, the event was hailed as “an especially joyous occasion” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review).  Other conducting engagements have included the Seattle Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, Handel & Haydn Society in Boston (conductor and soloist), the Opera Theatre of St Louis with the St Louis Symphony (conductor), the Grand Rapids Symphony (conductor and soloist) and the Cleveland Orchestra (guest keyboard artist). 

 

In addition, in February 2014, Sorrell filled in for British conductor Richard Egarr on five 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 its inaugural year.  In 2014-2015, she will return to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and will also make her debut with the New World Symphony in Miami.

Internationally, Sorrell has led sold-out concerts at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Madrid Royal Theatre, the Grand Théâtre de l’Opéra in Bordeaux, and major halls in Lisbon, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Boston on tour with Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra, of which she is the founder and music director.  She has also led Apollo’s Fire in two major U.S. tours of the Monteverdi Vespers in 2011 and 2014, under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Prior tour engagements included the Aspen Music Festival, Library of Congress, the Chautauqua Institution and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire record for the British label Avie Records, and have released 20 commercial CDs, of which four have been Top 10 bestsellers on the Billboard Classical chart.  Her recordings include the complete Brandenburg Concerti and harpsichord concerti (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 magazine.  Billboard bestsellers include the Brandenburgs, the Monteverdi Vespers and Sorrell’s two crossover/folk programs, Come to the River:  An Early American Gathering and Sacrum Mysterium:  A Celtic Christmas Vespers.

Sorrell has attracted national attention and awards for creative programming.  She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious American Masterpieces grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the research and production of Come to the River. Her awards include an honorary doctorate from Case Western University, the Bodky Award from the Cambridge Society of Early Music and the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society.

Passionate about guiding the next generation of performers, Sorrell has led many baroque projects for Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music.  She also has developed a highly successful Young Artist Apprentice Program to provide pre-professional training for talented period-instrument students under the auspices of Apollo’s Fire.

Born in the United States of Swiss and American parents, 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 the First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the 1991 Spivey International Harpsichord Competition. She holds an Artist Diploma from Oberlin Conservatory, where upon graduation she was invited to join the faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute.