©Photo: Kaupo Kikkas

Sean Shibe

Guitar/ Electric Guitar

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“Shibe’s music-making is masterful, beautiful and convincing in every way”
(The Times, 2020)

One of the most versatile guitarists performing today, Sean Shibe’s innovative approach to his instrument has enhanced his reputation for having “one of the most discriminating ears in the business” (Gramophone). He was the first guitarist ever to be selected for BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme, to be awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and, in 2018, to receive the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Young Artists. Additional accolades include the Royal Over-Seas League First Prize and Gold Medal (2011), and a prize from Dewar Arts and the 2015 YCAT International Auditions.

2021 marks the release of Shibe’s latest album Camino recorded for Pentatone and featuring an introspective programme of French and Iberian music. The album has been named the recording of the month by BBC Music Magazine as well the recording of the week by The Guardian, Presto Classical, and The Times describing it as “one of the most compelling and touching recitals for the instrument I can recall”. Camino follows a string of successes recorded for Delphian Records. Shibe’s debut album Dreams and Fancies (2017) was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award. The Gramophone Award-winning softLOUD (2018) was hailed as “spectacular” (Gramophone) and “gripping” (The Guardian), using both acoustic and electric guitar in repertoire ranging from Scottish lute manuscripts to electric guitar arrangements of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. With the laconically titled Bach (2020), a chart-topping recording of Bach lute suites arranged for guitar, Shibe became the cover star of Gramophone Magazine’s June 2020 issue in which the disc was named Editor’s Choice. The recording earned glowing reviews from The Times and The Scotsman, with Presto Classical and Europadisc both naming it ‘Disc of the Week’ and has been nominated for the Gramophone Award in the Instrumental Category.

Sean Shibe camino — Sean Shibe © Iga Gozdowska

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 Ghent 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.

Sean Shibe plays the world premiere of Daniel Kidane’s Haze © Barbican, 2021

Mompou's Coral - Guitarist Sean Shibe © PENTATONE

Tweedsyde at Balcarres House © East Neuk Festival, Stuart Armitt/ Video and Phil Hobbs/ Sound

‘Rosewoods for Solo Guitar and Strings’ with Sean Shibe and the Irish Chamber Orchestra © Irish Chamber Orchestra

Sean Shibe / Steve Reich, Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar and tape at Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 June 2020 Special Broadcast series © Wigmore Hall, 2020

Sean Shibe / J.S. Bach, Lute Suite in E Minor BWV996, mov I-III at Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 June 2020 Special Broadcast series © Wigmore Hall

Sean Shibe / Attaingnant, Basse Dance La Magdalena (1530) @ Baroque at the Edge © Apple and Biscuit Recordings 2020

Green Room Session with Sean Shibe © Wigmore Hall

“The best ever Bach recording of [guitar] … There seems to be no limit to Shibe’s characterful melodic instincts, with flourishes of rolling arpeggiations, exquisite harmonic placements and all kinds of textural delights. … the most interesting voice on the guitar for a generation”

(Gramophone, October 2021)

“one of the most compelling and touching recitals for the instrument I can recall”

(The Times, August 2021)

“All this perfectly suits Shibe’s great gift for painting notes in what seems a thousand colours, with multiple dynamic shadings en route. ..there are exquisite and tender sounds everywhere you look”

(Geoff Brown, The Times 5*, August 2021)

“It’s a beautifully intimate recording, full of playing that is as far from classical-guitar cliche .. full of big, bold gestures and soft, subtle shifts in colour. All the transitions from piece to piece, key to key, have been similarly meticulously thought through – but what’s really striking is the way in which Shibe sustains a world of intensity and introspection through playing that buzzes with vitality. The attention to detail in his playing is breathtaking; nothing interrupts the flow of the music, and nothing is done purely for effect.”

(Erica Jeal, The Guardian 5*, August 2021)

“Shibe’s ability to command a wide dynamic range within a relatively restricted compass naturally comes to the fore. .. a release that considerably enhances Shibe’s reputation for having one of the most discriminating ears in the business.”

(Gramophone, August 2021)

“Shibe’s playing in this warhorse was superlative…There was rhythmic exactitude across metallic, gutsy passagework in the first movement…Most remarkable, perhaps, was the featherlight touch and whisper quiet of the second movement’s cadenza… In the final movement he was rugged and playfully astringent, navigating Rodrigo’s rhythmic games with élan.”

(Bachtrack, June 2021)

“The greatest performers always push the boundaries, and that 28-year-old Sean Shibe […] is already in their select company. The spell, as always with Shibe, was total; no other guitarist that I know of is working at this artistic level.”

(The Arts Desk, 2020)

“…there’s no doubting that he himself is an artist blessed with grace to spare, and a roar that is fearsome”

(5*, BBC Music Magazine, Instrumental Choice, 2020)

“SoftLOUD is a gripping recital from guitarist Sean Shibe, dealing in extremes – I suspect his beautifully touched-in accounts of pieces from 17^th-century Scottish manuscripts will get more living-room plays than Julia Wolfe’s LAD, an abrasive electric-guitar scream originally conceived for nine bagpipes. In between, he also supplies a definitive performance of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint.”

(The Guardian, 2018)

“Shibe imbues the early Scottish lute pieces with a profoundly moving intensity that carries them far beyond their modest frames, through to the MacMillan arrangements, themselves as much transitions from the old to the new as Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, which seems to gather the previous works in a boppy afterparty. Then they are torn apart in Julia Wolfe’s LAD, a searing siren song of lamentation originally for nine bagpipes. And Lang’s explosive Killer, originally for electric violin. But try listening to ‘softLOUD’ in reverse order, and remember Britten’s Nocturnal.”

(Gramophone, 2018)

“A word of warning: in these desolate stretches, Sean Shibe may steal your heart with his guitar solo.”

(Gramophone Magazine, 2018)

“This is the best solo guitar disc I’ve heard.”

(The Arts Desk, 2017)