Skip Sempé | Capriccio Stravagante | Renaissance Orchestra - Artist Homepage
Skip Sempé
Skip Sempé, virtuoso harpsichordist, director and founder of Capriccio Stravagante, is at the forefront of today’s musical personalities in Renaissance and Baroque music. Sempé grew up in New Orleans, studied music, musicology, organology and the history of art in the United States at the Oberlin Conservatory and completed his training in Europe with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. His distinctive harpsichord playing, musicianship and interpretive flair were immediately recognized as the invention of an exotic, multi-dimensional and uncompromising musical personality. Sempé remained in Europe to embark on his own pioneering reconsideration of well and lesser-known repertoire ranging from 1500-1750.
Capriccio Stravagante now incorporates the chamber ensemble, the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra, the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra and Capriccio Stravagante Opera. The diverse vocal and instrumental formations of Capriccio Stravagante feature the finest European, American and Canadian musicians. Since the beginning, the magic combination of nonchalance and power which are the trademarks of Skip Sempé and Capriccio Stravagante’s live and recorded performances has been rewarded with outstanding critical praise worldwide.
As a solo performer, Sempé has focused on developing a superb sense of idiomatic harpsichord touch and a finely tuned ear for achieving variation in the instrument’s sonority. Performing and recording on the world’s most prestigious harpsichords, made by Ruckers, Skowroneck, Kennedy and Sidey, Skip Sempé is particularly known for his interpretations of the French classical harpsichord literature including Chambonnières, d’Anglebert, Forqueray, Louis and François Couperin and Rameau, for his adventurous and ground-breaking Bach and Scarlatti, and for the earlier virginalist repertoire of Byrd and his contemporaries. Solo performances from Seattle to Tokyo – including recitals at the Festivals of La Roque d’Antheron and Urbino, dedication concerts for the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Chateau de Versailles – as well as harpsichord master classes for the Leipzig Bach Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Stanford University, Mc Gill University and the University of Montreal have attracted a particularly enthusiastic following. Prizewinning recordings include Pavana – The Virgin Harpsichord, featuring Elizabethan music for one, two and three harpsichords with Olivier Fortin and Pierre Hantaï.