About
Over the past several years Marco Crispo’s contagious enthusiasm and driving personality has brought him to the close attention of audiences and orchestras.
First noticed for his work as an assistant for the Royal Danish Opera and for the Festival de Radio France, Marco Crispo - an Italian conductor based in Copenhagen - stepped in at short notice to lead Haydn’s The Creation, making his debut with the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier and receiving enthusiastic praise from both critics and audiences. His recent debuts include appearances with the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Khachaturian International Festival with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, to mention but a few.
In recent seasons, Marco has conducted Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol at Operaen i Midten, Tosca in Copenhagen with the Lyngby‑Taarbæk Symphony Orchestra, Hänsel und Gretel at the Landestheater Coburg, and Il Turco in Italia at both the Teatro Sociale di Rovigo and the Teatro Dante Alighieri in Ravenna with the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. The following year he will return to both the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier for a gala concert featuring the opera chorus and soprano Sheva Tehoval.
“ Talented, intellectually perspicacious and dedicated ”
Esa-Pekka Salonen
His recent highlights in the Nordic countries include his debut with the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra in Denmark, his concert with Odense Symphony Orchestra, the Fiskars Summer Festival in Finland and at the Baltic Sea Festival alongside Esa-Pekka Salonen in Sweden, where celebrated artists are invited to help promote unity and ecological awareness.
Marco has a natural, boundless, and unconditional relationship with music, which he has also expressed in his work as an arranger. His works for the Bron Chamber Orchestra have been performed in concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Tonhalle Zürich by internationally acclaimed musicians such as Maxim Vengerov and Daniel Hope. Thanks to Crispo being an advocate for discovery and inclusion of new music into the standard repertoire, a great deal of new music has been or will be performed for the first time in Scandinavia, such as the music of Bettinelli (NMH, Oslo 2019), Di Bari (Odense Symphony Orchestra, 2021) and Bertrand (Lyngby-Taarbæk Symphony Orchestra 2026).
Having always been greatly passionate about promoting awareness and education in classical music, Crispo has initiated several projects in Sicily: the establishment of the “Josè Antonio Abreu” youth orchestra and choir, which brought together disadvantaged children and offered free music lessons and the free loan of instruments, and raising funds and co-organising an academy of music for the growth of local musical education. Even outside of his native Italy, Crispo still keeps his bond to education and community having also been invited to join the Swedish Young Musicians Academy (YOMA) and Polstjärnepriset as a guest member.
Crispo’s commitment to contemporary music, support to young composers, and his dedication to research were rewarded with the offer of Fellowship by “Cortona Sessions for New Music'', by the “Fondation Idella” and by the “Margrethe Axel Fond”. Crispo was selected as one of the candidates of the Norwegian program “Dirigentforum 2018-20”.
Graduated with honors in classical guitar at the “A. Corelli” Conservatory in Messina, Crispo studied composition at the International Academy Foundation “Incontri col maestro” of Imola, and attended “Musicology and Musical Heritage” at the “Ca’ Foscari” University of Venice and at the University of Padua. After studying conducting with Donato Renzetti in Italy, he continued his studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he graduated from the Advanced Postgraduate program under the guidance of Giordano Bellincampi and Michael Schønwandt.
Crispo was selected to join the class of Daniele Gatti at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, and to participate to the Fiskars Festival where he was guided by Hannu Lintu, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, to whom he owes his recent artistic development.
