Amanda Babington’s debut solo album introduces you to the intriguing world of musette, a delicate French bagpipe whose fortunes rose and fell with French aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Works on the disc range from rustic dances to French suites and Italianate sonatas. The disc features three of the most prominent exponents of the musette, brothers Esprit-Philippe and Nicolas Chédeville and their relative Jean Hotteterre, as well as an extract from the only known work composed by the elusive musette virtuoso Colin Charpentier. Amanda’s insightful interpretation is underpinned by her research into the instrument and its repertoire and all the works on this disc are recorded here for the first time.

Amanda Babington is a musette player, baroque violinist and recorder player. She is Artistic Director of Baroque In The North and has played and recorded with many of the leading British and European period-instrument ensembles, as well as with chamber ensembles AB24, Four’s Company and Aberdeen Early Music Collective. A Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, Amanda has published various articles on G.F. Handel, and is regularly invited to give lectures at Göttingen International Handel Festival. Her edition of Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum and Dettingen Anthem for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe was published by Bärenreiter in 2016. More recently, however, her research has focused on French Baroque music pertaining to the musette, and she is currently researching musette repertoire at the Stuart court in Rome, c. 1733-1744.