Tempesta di Mare, hailed by Fanfare magazine for its ‘abundant energy, immaculate ensemble, and undeniable sense of purpose’, is led by the directors Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone, with the concertmaster Emlyn Ngai. Using baroque instruments, the ensemble performs baroque repertoire ranging from staged opera to chamber music, playing all orchestral works without a conductor, as was the practice when this music was new. Its Philadelphia Concert Series, noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer for its ‘off-the-grid chic factor’, emphasises the creation of a sense of discovery for artists and audience alike: since its launch in 2002, the series has included thirty-one modern ‘world premieres’ of lost or forgotten baroque masterpieces. This has led the Inquirer to describe the ensemble as ‘an old-music group that acts like a new-music group, by pushing the cutting edge back rather than forward’. Its supporters include the Pew Charitable Trusts, William Penn Foundation, Presser Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts.

In a marketplace dominated by European ensembles, Tempesta di Mare is the only American baroque music group to record for the prestigious British label Chandos. Currently available are recordings of lute concerti by Silvius Leopold Weiss (2004), Nine German Arias and other works by Handel (Flaming Rose, 2007), cantatas and chamber music by Alessandro Scarlatti (2010), three volumes of orchestral works by Johann Friedrich Fasch (2008, 2011, and 2012), recorder sonatas by Francesco Mancini (2013), trio sonatas by J.S. Bach (2013), the two-volume series Comédie et Tragédie of French baroque orchestral music for the theatre (2015 and 2016), and works by Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, rediscovered in the Sara Levy Collection (2018).

The ensemble’s live performances have been broadcast nationally on programmes such as SymphonyCast, Performance Today, Sunday Baroque, and Harmonia. Live concert recordings are distributed worldwide via the European Broadcasting Union, the world’s foremost alliance of public service media organisations, with members in fifty-six countries in Europe and beyond.

Tempesta di Mare has toured the world from Oregon to Prague, making appearances at the Prague Spring Festival, Internationale Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, and Internationale Fasch-Festtage in Zerbst; in the USA it has recently made return visits to the Frick Collection and the National Gallery of Art, as well as appearances at the Miami Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Abbey Bach Festival, Whitman College, Cornell Concerts, Yale Collection, Flagler Museum, and Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series, Hartford.