Clavecin : Memorandum : Skip Sempé

Early Music Today (Mar, 2016)
This substantial volume of writings and recordings by American harpsichordist and director Skip Sempe is a release on Sempe’s own label, Paradizo. It is no mere vanity project, though, when the musician in focus has so very much to say that is worth reading.

Beautifully presented, the hardback volume lays out a great deal of Sempe’s musical rationale and thinking in essays, programme notes and liner notes by the man himself as well as interviews with him and the odd bit of other writing (his teacher Gustav Leonhardt’s paean to Flemish virginals of the 17th-century is included). All text is given both in English and in French. Keyboards and keyboardists feature …