Shibe was one of the first artists to return to the Wigmore Hall following the Covid-19 lockdown, receiving a five-star review from The Guardian for his “irresistible style and authority… a nonchalant virtuoso and boundary breaker”. He looks forward to opening his 2021 – 22 season with a BBC Chamber Prom at Cadogan Hall followed by appearances at the Schleswig Holstein Music Festivals, St David’s Hall Cardiff, Glasgow Cathedral Festival, and King’s Place in London. Recent stage highlights include performances at the Southbank Centre in London, Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Heidelberger-Frühling, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Musashino Hall in Tokyo, the East Neuk and Aldeburgh Festivals, and Marlboro Summer Music Festival – the latter at the invitation of Mitsuko Uchida. He has appeared with almost all of the UK symphony orchestras and this season performs in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and in Gent and Rovereto. Recent collaborators include the BBC Singers, flautist Adam Walker, singers Allan Clayton, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray and Robin Tritschler, and performance artist and art filmmaker Marina Abramović.
A great admirer of the masterful composers of the past, Shibe is equally committed to conceiving imaginative programmes of new music and commissions. Alongside his own transcriptions of Bach’s lute suites and seventeenth century Scottish lute manuscripts he continues to explore, experiment, and expand the repertoire for his instrument both in the studio and on stage with the music of composers such as Daniel Kidane, David Fennessy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Thomas Ades, Shiva Feshareki, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Sir James Macmillan, Mark Simpson, Sylvia Villa and Freya Waley-Cohen.
Born in Edinburgh in 1992 of English and Japanese heritage, Shibe studied under Allan Neave at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Paolo Pegoraro in Italy. He is a D’Addario Endorsee and performs on these strings exclusively. Shibe currently holds a teaching position at University of the Arts Bremen.
HarrisonParrott represents Sean Shibe for worldwide general management.