Sean Shibe (guitar)

24 year-old Sean Shibe, the first ever guitarist admitted to the BBC New Generation Artists scheme, is one of the most exciting new performers on the concert scene. Regularly praised for his prodigious technical abilities and supremely expressive playing, Shibe here performs an all-English programme, including a major set of variations by Britten based on the Dowland song Come, Heavy Sleep, which employ tonal ambiguities to depict a shifting dream-realm somewhere between sleep and death. His recital also features the dazzling Five Bagatelles by Walton, which fully exploit both the guitar’s capacity for intimate melancholy and toe-tapping Cuban syncopations.