Ensemble Volcania
Every moment on stage can be made into magic: this is Ensemble Volcania’s core belief.
The international musician-adventurers of the ensemble led by Elisabeth Champollion
and Franciska Anna Hajdu find glamor, heat, and joy in the scores of Vivaldi, Bach and
other past masters – and commission compelling new music from living composers,
whose works draw on the intensity of baroque passions using the musical language of
today.
In its work, the ensemble places connection in the foreground: that of the musicians
to the music, potentially leading to a different musical result each evening; and of the
musicians to the audience, sparking the unique excitement of live performance.
Elisabeth Champollion traverses the intersection of
Early and New Music with her ensemble Volcania.
As a soloist and ensemble musician, she has toured to festivals such as the MDR
Musiksommer, Tage Alter Musik Herne, Boston Early Music Festival, and Premiere
Performance Festival in Hong Kong.
She is the artistic director of the Bremen concert series “Gröpelinger Barock”, a firstprize
winner of the competition for solo recorder in Nordhorn, and, with her chamber
music ensembles PRISMA and Boreas Quartett Bremen, the recipient of many other
international honors.
In 2011, she was a fellow of Concerto21, an academy centered around innovative
concert formats and audience development.
She teaches recorder and coaches ensembles on a regular basis, privately as well as
at the University of the Arts in Bremen and the Internationaler Arbeitskreis für Musik,
among others.
Daniel Sepec is concertmaster of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
Bremen, a position he has held since 1993. He also performs regularly as a soloist with
his orchestra and was the artistic director and violin soloist in two of the orchestra’s
CD recordings, one with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and another with Antonio
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
As a guest concertmaster, he has collaborated on many occasions with the Chamber
Orchestra of Europe (including a tour with Claudio Abbado), the Camerata Academica
Salzburg and the Ensemble Oriol Berlin.
His solo appearances include performances with the Academy of Ancient Music
under Christopher Hogwood, the Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck, and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées under Philippe Herreweghe.
His recording of H. I. F. Biber’s Rosary Sonatas received the annual award of the
German Record Critics. Up to now, Daniel Sepec is the only musician to have recorded
a CD playing on a recently rediscovered violin that belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven,
a project he undertook together with the pianist Andreas Staier.
From September 2010 to July 2014, he taught as a professor at the Basel Academy
of Music. In 2014, he accepted a professorship at the University of Music in Lübeck.