PENTATONE is delighted to announce that guitarist Sean Shibe is releasing his first album with the label.
Widely regarded as one of the most talented young players of the moment, multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar by experimenting with instruments and repertoire. Shibe’s first PENTATONE solo album is an introspective programme exploring French-Spanish musical borders, presenting works by composers including Mompou, Poulenc, de Falla, José and Ravel.
Introspective Exploration of French Spanish Musical Borders
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 Canços 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.
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. Camino is the first fruit of an exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE.“Over the last year and a half I have gone through periods of believing that recording my feelings of isolation and solitude would be worthwhile, but it didn’t take very long before I realised that I’d taken in enough meditations on loneliness for a lifetime. Instead, I’ve recorded something closer to the opposite. Some of these pieces are from my childhood; others reference a sort of ideal childlike state; but everything on this album has given me deep comfort and sustenance over a difficult and traumatic period.
Colleagues of mine have sometimes asked what it would take for me to get over my apparent aversion to the sentimentality of the Spanish repertoire traditionally associated with the guitar. I could, perhaps, tell those colleagues that a global pandemic would do the trick, but I would argue that all of the ostensibly Spanish composers presented here demonstrate the fecundity of the Franco-Spanish connection, and — to go further than that — Mompou, central to this programme, is perhaps more European than Spanish. He eschews all flamboyant piquancy; his homage to Santiago de Compostela instead softly adores, the ecclesiastical overtones never overbear; and, somehow, these pieces sum up pilgrimage at its most existentially humanist. For Mompou, melancholy, aimlessness and a whole host of other feelings are not things to be avoided or fixed or solved, but experiences to be deeply felt; when his music reflects, it is less with sad nostalgia than genuine wonder and excitement at what this means for the future.”
Sean Shibe
PRE-RELEASE SINGLE
Mompou – Coral
Guitarist Sean Shibe presents Coral, an introspective, melancholic piece from Frederic Mompou’s Suite Compostelana. Coral is a pre-release of Shibe’s contemplative full album Camino, on which he explores Spanish-French musical borders.
