Downtown church goes for baroque

With its solemn, soaring, stone-and-wood architecture and clean acoustics (not to mention cushioned pews), Trinity United Methodist Church in downtown Youngstown is a fine place for serious music.

Adam Zagotti, the church’s director of music, plans to utilize it. In a high-brow start to what will likely be a series of concerts, Zagotti is bringing in an ensemble from Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. The four-man chamber ensemble (harpsichord, two violins and a viola) will perform in the 900-seat sanctuary at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18.

Zagotti, 28, a Dana School of Music student and a Salem native, has been the music director at Trinity for a year and a half. He knows that landing an ensemble from Apollo’s Fire — an orchestra that has drawn critical acclaim across the globe — is an attention-getter.

And he hopes music-lovers respond, so that he can keep the concerts coming. He wants the venue to be another cultural draw in downtown Youngstown.

Seated behind a large desk in his office in the castlelike church edifice, Zagotti explained the lure of baroque music and Apollo’s Fire.

“Baroque is overly ornate, over-the-top music, just like baroque art and architecture,” he said. “It’s also very difficult to play.”

Three composers are most closely associated with the Barque period: Handel, Vivaldi and Bach.

“A lot of people find it interesting to hear what was played in the past, and how it was played,” he continued. “Apollo’s Fire plays on instruments that were made in the 1600s and 1700s, or reproductions. Their accuracy in performing the same way it was originally done is what put them on the map.”

As an example, he cited Handel’s “Messiah,” the popular Christmas oratorio that is commonly presented these days with choirs exceeding a hundred voices. “Apollo’s Fire is doing Messiah this year the way Handel did it — with about 12 singers,” said Zagotti.

For those who are interested but want to learn more, a 20-minute explanation of Baroque music by Dana professor Randy Goldberg will precede the Sept. 18 concert.

Tickets are $10 ($5 for students) and can be purchased by calling Trinity Church at 330-744-5032.

Before I left Trinity, Zagotti gave me a tour of the sanctuary. He sat down at the pipe organ, the church’s musical centerpiece, and began to play. As his song came to an end, he pulled out all the stops — and I mean that literally, because that’s how a pipe organ gains volume — and filled the sacred space with a majestic sound that matched its surroundings in history and beauty.