sean shibe

A selection of Scottish lute manuscripts

Bach: Lute Suite in E minor, BWV 996

Gubaidulina: Serenade

Rautavaara: Serenades of the Unicorn

Fennessy: Rosewood

Sean Shibe is “one of the foremost guitarists” of his generation. In 2018 Sean Shibe won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award following a hugely successful debut album release on Delphian Records, which also won him a nomination in the BBC Music Magazine ‘Instrumental Award’ category. Dreams and Fancies is a recording that explores the fruits of Julian Bream’s history of commissioning in the 20th Century alongside music by Dowland and was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone as well as BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice.

Alongside the success of his recording debut, Sean Shibe’s “uncompromisingly monumental” project softLOUD premiered at the East Neuk and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals – a revelatory programme juxtaposing Jacobean lute music for classical guitar, with electric guitar arrangements of multi-tracked repertoire including US Pulitzer prize winning composers Julia Wolfe’s powerful elegy LAD, (originally written for 9 bagpipes) and David Lang’s Killer. These works form part of his award-winning softLOUD recording, hailed by critics as “bracingly original”.

Born in Edinburgh in 1992 of English and Japanese heritage, he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and with Paolo Pegoraro in Italy. At age 20, he became the rst guitarist to be selected for the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme, and the only solo guitarist to be awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. He was a YCAT artist between 2015 – 2017.

He has performed at internationally renowned venues including Aldeburgh Festival, Bath International Festival, Heidelberger-Fruhling and the Musashino Hall in Tokyo. He returned to the Marlboro Summer Music Festival on the invitation of Mitsuko Uchida, and has extensively toured in China.

Highlights of the 19-20 season include SoftLOUD for MiTo Settembre Musica and the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, and Rodrigo with the Royal Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall. Recitals include his return to Wigmore Hall, a tour of Ireland with Ben Johnson, and further recitals in Cardi, Oxford, Istanbul and Budapest.

With an acute interest in commissioning new works and arrangements for the instrument, Sean Shibe has recently performed new music by Michael Murray, James MacMillan and Daniel Kidane.

He has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Symphony, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and Trondheim Orchestras performing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasia para un Gentilhombre, the Malcolm Arnold and Villa-Lobos Concertos, and recording Takemitsu’s To the Edge of Dream. He has recorded solo works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for Linn as part of a Scottish Chamber Orchestra disc, as well as John Adams Naive and Sentimental Music with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Chandos.

Recent collaborators include the BBC Singers, Danish String Quartet, cellist Isang Enders, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and singers Ben Johnson, Robert Murray and Robert Tritschler.

His awards include the Royal Over-Seas League First Prize and Gold Medal (2011), Ivor Mairants Guitar Award (2009), a Dewar Arts and D’Addarrio endorsement. He is grateful for support from the Hattori Trust.