- siped@uwm.edu
- Music Building 260
Don Sipe
- Adjunct Professor, Trumpet
Education
MM, Trumpet, Eastman School of Music
BM, Trumpet, Eastman School of Music
Biography
Trumpet player Donald Sipe is a member of Present Music, the Isthmus Brass, and Principal Trumpet of the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra.
As an orchestral trumpeter, he has performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, and the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, the Syracuse Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Green Bay Symphony, the Chicago Sinfonietta, Chicagoland Pops, the Elgin Symphony and the Brass Band of Battle Creek.
The range of his performing activities cross many genres, including classical, jazz, rock and broadway. He has performed with a wide range of luminaries including Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Doc Severisen, Ray Charles, Marvin Hamlisch, Bill Conti, Jerry Goldsmith, The Who, Peter Gabriel, Jewel, Il Divo, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, the Moody Blues, Jerry Lewis and Bob Newhart.
He has also been heard in the pit with several broadway national touring companies, including West Side Story, HAIR, Book of Mormon, Anastasia, Chicago, Mean Girls, The Sound of Music and Wicked.
Sipe has appeared as soloist with the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, the Air Force Heritage of America Band (with jazz trumpeter Marvin Stamm), the Waukesha Symphony, Present Music, and the National Repertory Orchestra.
He has recorded extensively with Present Music, but also with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Summit Brass, Sones de Mexico and new age artist Peter Buffett. He can also be heard on dozens of TV and radio commercials and other theatrical tracks recorded at Tanner-Monagle studios in Milwaukee, WI.
His chamber music credits include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble, the Chicago Brass Quintet, Present Music, The Milwaukee Brass Quintet, the Fulcrum Point New Music Ensemble, the UW-Milwaukee Faculty Brass Quintet and the Summit Brass. His arrangements for brass quintet have been played by many brass quintets including Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet.
His work with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra includes conducting the brass choirs, coaching chamber music groups and leading masterclasses.
He is the former instructor of trumpet at Carroll University and Carthage College, and has led masterclasses at the University of DePaul, University of WI-Whitewater, as well as the Eastman School of Music.
He is a former Co-principal trumpet of the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida, where he worked with the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and has participated in several summer music festivals, including Tanglewood Music Festival, Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, the Woodstock Mozart Festival, the Peninsula Music Festival, and the National Repertory Orchestra in Keystone, CO.
Sipe earned his Bachelor and Master's degrees in music from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where he studied trumpet with Barbara Butler.