Shibe

Tenor Karim Sulayman and guitarist Sean Shibe present Broken Branches, a conceptual album with music ranging from Dowland, Monteverdi, Britten, Rodrigo, Takemitsu, Harvey, and Chaker to traditional songs from the Middle East, scrutinizing the close cultural and musical ties between East and West. This musical exploration ties in with the artists’ personal experience of a dynamic, in-between identity, as they grew up in the West having ethnic roots in the East (Lebanon and Japan respectively). Broken Branches explores the wood of the guitar and its relatives, as well as the splintering of history known as diaspora.

At the heart of Sean Shibe’s album Camino is Catalan composer Federico Mompou’s Suite compostelana, an atmospheric, affectionate homage to Santiago de Compostela, the destination on the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that winds through northern Spain. But this collection of French and Spanish music also represents a personal journey for the award-winning guitarist, as he sets out afresh with a new record label, Pentatone, and seeks solace from the melancholy and solitude of the pandemic in music he played in his youth. Alongside Mompou, de Falla’s moving tribute to Debussy, Poulenc’s introspective “Sarabande,” Satie piano works deftly arranged for guitar, and Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte” all provide comfort and reassurance. It’s beautifully phrased and recorded with equal intimacy.

Sean Shibe’s second PENTATONE album Lost & Found is an ecstatic journey containing music by outsiders, mystics, visionaries, who often have more than one identity and lay claim to various artistic traditions, genres, or audiences. The repertoire ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to Olivier Messiaen, Moondog, Julius Eastman, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Meredith Monk, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Leith and Daniel Kidane. Stretching ten centuries, these pieces are bound together by Shibe’s unique electric guitar sound and aesthetic.

Sean Shibe returns to the classical guitar on Profesión, bringing together works by Agustín Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. The album derives its name from Barrios’s “Profesión de Fe” (profession of faith), a poem which he often used as a preface to his concerts. The poem references indigenous mythological deities, and praises the power of the guitar as the ultimate conduit to the secrets of the divine South-American destiny.

Multi-award-winning Sean Shibe, widely recognised as the leading guitarist of his generation, joins Delphian regulars The Choir of King’s College London in these beguilingly conceived works by Shibe’s friend and compatriot Lliam Patterson, for the rare combination of choir with electric guitar.

Camino is guitarist Sean Shibe’s first PENTATONE album, an introspective programme exploring French-Spanish musical borders, a pilgrimage leading from Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte, Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1 and Gnossiennes 1 and 3, Poulenc’s Sarabande, De Falla’s Miller’s Dance and Homaje, pour le Tombeau de Debussy and José’s Pavana triste all the way to Mompou’s Cançons i dansas 6 and 10, as well as his Suite compostelana. Shibe has deliberately granted Mompou a central role on this album, as his music demonstrates that melancholy, aimlessness and a whole host of other feelings are not things to be avoided or fixed or solved, but experiences to be felt deeply: not with sad nostalgia, but with genuine wonder and excitement at what this means for the future. In that respect, Camino also documents Shibe’s personal quest to overcome the challenges of a time dominated by Covid-19, and to ultimately see the world anew.

Sean Shibe's second PENTATONE album Lost & Found is an ecstatic journey containing music by outsiders, mystics, visionaries, who often have more than one identity and lay claim to various artistic traditions, genres, or audiences. The repertoire ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to Olivier Messiaen, Moondog, Julius Eastman, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Meredith Monk, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Leith and Daniel Kidane. Stretching ten centuries, these pieces are bound together by Shibe's unique electric guitar sound and aesthetic. Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. He continues his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE after his well-received label debut Camino (2021).