Apr. 17: Guitarist Sean Shibe Announces New Album, Vesper, Plus NPR Tiny Desk Out Today!

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Contact: Katy Salomon | Primo Artists | VP, Public Relations 
katy@primoartists.com | 646.801.9406

---

 

Guitarist Sean Shibe Announces 
New Album, Vesper 

A Radical Reimagining of the Guitar’s 
Sonic Universe Through the World Premiere
Recordings of Thomas Adès’s Forgotten
Dances, Harrison Birtwistle’s Complete Works
for Solo Guitar, and James Dillon’s 12 Caprices 

Out April 17, 2026 on PENTATONE

New Pre-Release EP, Adès: Forgotten Dances, Out Now! 

Watch Shibe’s NPR Tiny Desk, Out Today!

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

“Close your eyes and the music sounds fresh and confident, mapping new territory 
for the classical guitar.” – NPR

www.seanshibe.com 

 

New York, NY (December 12, 2025) – On Friday, April 17, 2026, PENTATONE releases Vesper, a landmark album from trailblazing guitarist Sean Shibe, featuring three major contemporary voices who have each reshaped the expressive possibilities of the instrument: Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, and James Dillon. Across more than an hour of world premiere recordings – including Adès’s Forgotten Dances (2023), Birtwistle’s complete oeuvre for the guitar, and Dillon’s monumental 12 Caprices (2025) – Shibe creates a striking portrait of the guitar as an instrument of illusion, ritual, and elemental sound. Hugh Morris and Jonathan Leathwood have provided illuminating liner notes.

Shibe performs on “Sylvette” (2021), a one-of-a-kind guitar built by Simon Ambridge in collaboration with French-British artist Lydia Corbett (born Sylvette David) – Picasso’s muse and the subject of over sixty of his works. The instrument’s Torres-inspired construction and hand-painted surfaces echo the album’s central themes and harken back to Birtwistle’s Picasso-inspired works. 

A new, pre-release EP, Adès: Forgotten Dances is out now!

Thomas Adès’s six-movement suite, Forgotten Dances (2023), offers an intensely imaginative rethinking of guitar idiom – an instrument he approaches as “a spider’s web, in texture and essence.” His first major piece for solo guitar, the work ranges from the volatile Overture – Queen of the Spiders to a glowing Purcell-inflected final movement, Vesper.  

Harrison Birtwistle’s relationship with the guitar was shaped by his friendships with Julian Bream and his guitarist son, Silas. Beyond the White Hand – commissioned by the Bream Trust – draws on Picasso’s Cubist abstraction and the ritualistic, “grungy” sound world that became a signature of the composer’s late style. Shibe also includes Birtwistle’s complete miniatures for the instrument, including the early Oockooing Bird, Sleep Song, Berceuse de Jeanne, Sad Song, and the Machaut-inspired Je sui aussi. Together, they form an unprecedented “collected works” for solo guitar by a major modernist figure.

Written “in a few days… out of the blue – or moonlight,” James Dillon’s 12 Caprices (2025) investigates the guitar as a laboratory for resonance, texture, and gesture. The cycle juxtaposes fragmentary lyricism with intricate rhythmic design, invoking influences from Lorca, Scottish piping, and modernist miniatures.  

Recorded at Crichton Collegiate Chapel in Midlothian, the album marks a new chapter in Shibe’s ongoing collaborations with leading 20th- and 21st-century composers, continuing the bold programming that has defined his widely acclaimed albums Profesión, Lost & Found, Broken Branches, and Camino.  

Vesper Tracklist
Thomas Adès (b. 1971) – Forgotten Dances
    1. No. 1, Overture – Queen of the Spiders (3:21)
    2. No. 2, Berceuse – The Paradise of Thebes (3:55)
    3. No. 3, Courante – Here was a swift (for Max Ernst) (1:49)
    4. No. 4, Barcarolle – The Maiden Voyage (2:26)
    5. No. 5, Carillon de Ville (for Hector Berlioz) (2:16)
    6. No. 6, Vesper (for Henry Purcell) (6:11)

7. Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022) – Beyond the White Hand: Construction with Guitar Player (18:26) 

8. Harrison Birtwistle – Guitar and White Hand (1:54)

9. Thomas Adès – ”Habanera” from The Exterminating Angel (2:55)

10. Harrison Birtwistle (arr. for guitar by Forbes Henderson) – Oockooing Bird (2:42) 

11. Harrison Birtwistle – Sleep Song (1:28)

12. Harrison Birtwistle (arr. for guitar by Forbes Henderson) – Berceuse de Jeanne (2:56)

13. Harrison Birtwistle (arr. for guitar by Forbes Henderson) – Sad Song (2:27)

14. Harrison Birtwistle – Je sui aussi (1:01) 

James Dillon (b. 1950) – 12 Caprices
    15. Caprice 1 (0:28)
    16. Caprice 2 (0:38)
    17. Caprice 3 (1:29)
    18. Caprice 4 (0:35)
    19. Caprice 5 (0:34)
    20. Caprice 6 (0:52)
    21. Caprice 7 (0:44)
    22. Caprice 8 (0:54)
    23. Caprice 9 (0:52)
    24. Caprice 10 (1:10)
    25. Caprice 11 (1:08)
    26. Caprice 12 (1:01)

Total Playing Time: 64:31 

PTC5187518
Recorded at Crichton Collegiate Chapel, Midlothian, from June 12-13 and August 11-12, 2025
Producers/Engineering: Matthew Swan (production & mastering), Oscar Torres (engineering & post-production)
Liner Notes: Hugh Morris & Jonathan Leathwood
Photography: Camilla Greenwell; Campbell Parker

About Sean Shibe
Guitarist Sean Shibe continues to establish himself as a boundary-pushing force in contemporary classical music.

Highlights of Shibe’s 2025/26 season include the world premiere of Mark Simpson’s electric guitar concerto Zebra at the 2025 BBC Proms, his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Adès, a residency at the Southbank Centre including his debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Marin Alsop, a residency at Porto’s Casa da Música, and recital tours across the UK, Europe and the US. This season he premieres works by Tyshawn Sorey, Poul Ruders, Carola Bauckholt and Ben Nobuto.

Recent engagements include a residency at Wigmore Hall, featuring a special programme marking Pierre Boulez’s centenary with the chamber cantata Le Marteau sans maître (a programme which also went to Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Aldeburgh Festival and the BBC Proms). Shibe also toured the UK with folk fiddler Aidan O’Rourke; collaborated across the UK and Europe with mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska in an innovative exploration of the Orlando myth incorporating electronics, melodica, protest songs and spoken word; and joined tenor Karim Sulayman for a critically acclaimed U.S. tour of their GRAMMY-nominated programme Broken Branches. He also made debuts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and toured Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, performing Cassandra Miller’s concerto Chanter in thirteen concerts nationwide.

Shibe works closely with a diverse range of musicians and ensembles. In recent years, he has collaborated with The Hallé, BBC Scottish Symphony and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia, The King’s Singers, Manchester Collective, Dunedin Consort, Quatuor Van Kujik, Danish String Quartet, LUDWIG, and conductors Thomas Adès, Krzysztof Urbanski, Anja Bihlmaier, Delyana Lazarova and Andrew Manze, flautist Adam Walker, violist Timothy Ridout, singers Allan Clayton, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray and Robin Tritschler, and performance artist Marina Abramovic, among others.

Shibe is an ardent supporter of contemporary music, taking a hands-on approach to new commissions and working with composers to experiment with and expand the guitar repertoire. Premieres to date include works by Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, Cassandra Miller, Sasha Scott, Daniel Kidane, David Fennessy, Shiva Feshareki, David Lang, Freya Waley-Cohen, James Dillon and Mark Simpson. He is equally committed to the canon, regularly pairing bold, new pieces with his own transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s lute suites and seventeenth-century Scottish lute manuscripts. 

Widely praised for his original programming, Shibe’s recordings have consistently garnered critical acclaim, to date receiving six Gramophone Award Shortlistings. His latest solo album Profesión was awarded the 2024 BBC Music Magazine Award. Released the same year, his collaboration with tenor Karim Sulayman – Broken Branches – was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, and his solo album Lost & Found was awarded the OPUS Klassik 2023 Award for Solo Instrument, adding to an OPUS Klassik 2021 Award for Chamber Music Recording, a 2019 Gramophone Concept Album of the Year Award and a 2021 Gramophone Instrumental Award for softLOUD and Bach respectively. 

Shibe studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with Allan Neave, later continuing at the Kunst-Universität Graz and in Italy under Paolo Pegoraro. He currently serves as a Guitar Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is a former BBC New Generation Artist, a 2012 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship recipient, winner of the 2018 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award and the 2022 Leonard Bernstein Award, and an ECHO Rising Star during the 2023/24 season. 

Learn more at www.seanshibe.com. 

# # #