Sean Shibe

Sean Shibe, "one of the world's top classical guitarists" (The Observer), was born in Edinburgh in 1992. He is the first guitarist to be selected for the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme, receive a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, and win the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award. Last year his debut release was shortlisted for a Classical Brit. His latest release, 'softLOUD', continued the trend in being a finalist for the BBC Music Magazine Awards, and in May it received the Best New Recorded Work Award at the Scottish Awards for New Music.

softLOUD

'softLOUD' is Sean Shibe’s powerful response to discourse which dominates our everyday: electric and acoustic, early and modern, these radical contradictions speak to our time. Gently beautiful Jacobean lute manuscripts are confronted by music of cathartic grief and anger originally for nine bagpipes (Julia Wolfe’s 'LAD'); David Lang's 'Killer' is iron-clad in its abrupt fury. All these works are arranged by Shibe, placed alongside a breathtaking recording of Steve Reich's 'Electric Counterpoint' the composer describes as "the best ever". ‘Have we today forgotten how to speak gracefully,’ Shibe asks, ‘or is the real danger that we aren’t screaming loudly enough?’