Erik Dippenaar

BIOGRAPHY

In 2003 Erik Dippenaar obtained the degree BMus (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University and was awarded a MMus (with distinction) by the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London in 2007. The following year he completed an Artist Diploma in Performance at the RCM. His teachers included Margaret Phillips (organ), Robert Woolley, Terence Charlston and Jane Chapman (harpsichord) and Geoffrey Govier (fortepiano). 

From 2005 to 2011 Erik was based in London, where he worked on a regular basis with Florilegium, The London Handel Players, English Touring Opera, the Little Baroque Company and Ensemble Serse. Erik was one of the official accompanists for the annual London Handel Singing Competition and during 2008/2009 he was appointed as Mills/Williams Junior Fellow at the RCM. 

Erik is currently Artistic Director of the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra, Artistic Director of the annual Cape Town Baroque Festival, and an adjunct lecturer in organ and harpsichord performance, as well as Western music history and historical performance practice, at the University of Cape Town (UCT). His conducting highlights include the first South African period performance of Handel’s Messiah in 2013, as well as Cape Town Opera’s first production to use a period instrument orchestra: Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in 2016.  

Erik has recently been awarded a PhD in music by UCT, with a dissertation focussing on the role historical domestic keyboard instruments played in the colonisation process in Southern Africa.