You may have read my interviews and posts with the extraordinary guitarist and enquiring mind, Jorge Caballero.
He and his wife Maggie have started a new project – Classical Guitar Beats – here is the intro
Welcome to Guitar Beats! This site is dedicated to the study of Classical Guitar, using advanced and innovative methodology. Our approach is innovative in that total exploration of the psyche (mind, body) is employed to achieve mastery of the guitar. This pedagogical method is universal: its methods can be directly transferred and applied to other instruments and disciplines. Simply stated, our goal is to provide all levels of music students the tools to learn and progress.
The site provides fascinating insights into such vexing subjects as the collapsible joint rest stroke, semi-rest-stroke free stroke and the downward push free stroke,
Find out more by visiting the site which has a monthly feature. Here are also my interviews in Iserlohn with Jorge.
Sean Shibe was born in Edinburgh in 1992, and is currently studying guitar at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, under Allan Neave. His musical education was grounded in the Scottish National Centres of Excellence from the age of 9, firstly in the City of Edinburgh Music School. Shortly after turning 14 he moved to the Aberdeen City Music School to commence study under Allan Neave. When 15 years old he auditioned for music conservatoires, receiving scholarship offers from the RSAMD, Trinity College, and the Royal College of Music in London. He received his ABRSM Diploma (perf.) with distinction in the Summer before assuming his place in the RSAMD, as the youngest musician to ever enter the establishment. Upon graduating he received honours of the first class.
He has worked with such groups as the Barbirolli Quartet, the Scottish Flute Trio and Scottish Opera, and is in regular demand as a soloist from guitar festivals around the United Kingdom, having performed at Dundee Guitar Festival, Big Guitar Weekend and Ullapool Guitar Festival. In 2009, he was invited by West Dean International Classical Guitar Festival to perform the first movement of the Brouwer Sonata to the maestro himself. In addition to these invitations, he has performed recitals and as a concerto soloist to critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, China, Holland, Germany, Liechtenstein and has featured on the BBC and European television and radio.
He regularly collaborates with composers in reworkings and new compositions to consistent critical acclaim, so far having premiered seven new works. These include a reworking of Jacob’s Ladder by Halfidi Hallgrimsson (Icelandic Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence) in his first recital series in the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In the annual PLUG new music festival of 2009, his premiere of Marek Pascienczny’s Sequenza for guitar solo was reviewed as: “pure magic…the best acoustic guitarist I have ever heard…Sean Shibe…remember the name, one day he will be famous” (Michael Tumelty, The Herald).
He also competes on an international level – in 2008, aged 16, he was a finalist in the first senior competition he entered, “Westfalian Guitar Spring” in Germany, and later that year received the Chanterelle Guitar Prize. The following year he won the Royal Over-Seas League Len Lickorish Award for a String Player of Promise, was awarded second place in the LiGiTa Liechtenstein International Guitar Competition and Festival, and first prize in the Ivor Mairants Guitar Award of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. In November 2010 he won the North East Scotland Classical Guitar Society Award, and 3 months later, in London, won the String Section Final of the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition. In May 2011 he was awarded 3rd prize in the Anna Amalia Guitar competition in Weimar and 2 weeks later became only the second guitarist ever to win the Royal Over-Seas League first prize and gold medal. In February 2012, following nomination and shortlisting, he became the only solo guitarist to have received a Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship. Highlights of this season have included a Wigmore Hall debut and sell-out performances at the East Neuk and Brighton Festivals. Later this year he will make his debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, performing Rodrigo’s Concierto De Aranjuez under Andrew Manze.
I first met Sean when he joined NYGE in 2005. He was around 4’8”when we first met.
He is now an artist of growing stature.
Last month, Nejc Kuhar (that’s pronounced Nates Kuhar) visited me in Oxford.
I first met this genial Slovenian composer and guitarist at the Iserlohn Festival and was impressed by his playing and general quiet but friendly manner.
He has been composing up a storm since I last met him, and I too the opportunity to quiz him over a pint in the famous Kings Arms pub in central Oxford. He is very tall and had to stoop to get in the snug at the back. We talked about the reason for his visit to the UK, his attitude to composition and his studies with Alvaro Pierri.
Here are some videos of Nejc playing and composing
The OGS is going great guns at the moment – Haydn Bateman and Jack Hancher, both at the Royal College of Music in London and ex alumni of the National Youth Guitar Ensemble will be playing on Sunday 8th Feb in Sandford Village Hall, near Oxford. Daniel Stachowiak has already played twice for them, and they have put on concerts in Oxford for Cheryl Grice, Ray Burley and John Mills, amongst others.
In 2002, I was invited to write a concerto for the Christée-Baldissera violin and guitar duo. This was performed in the German town of Bad Munder.
I finished the piece in a couple of weeks and heard nothing from the duo or the conductor for weeks. Jeanne Christée requested a more virtuosic final movement which I rewrote as a tango and battle between the soloists and the orchestra!
Finally I received an invitation to attend the concert and worked out how get to Bad Munder.
It was quite a journey, compositionally and geographically.
Alison and I got off a train at Bad Munder to find the station was in the middle of the countryside with no clue as to where the town was. Far away on the horizon there was a steeple, so we headed out towards it across snowy fields. It was indeed the town, but there was absolutely no one around.
I had never heard the duo and luckily they had the music down to a tee despite problems with the guitar amplification. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the snowy ghost town. It was beautiful, with traditional north German wooden houses.
In the evening, there were suddenly hundreds of people attending the concert – where had they all come from?
Many years later, my friend Sergej Krinicin of the Baltic Guitar Quartet asked if he could play the piece – he had a duo with the violin virtuoso, Vilhelmas Cepinskis.
Vilhelmas wanted the concerto rewritten for symphony orchestra, but it was originally conceived for strings! We finally agreed it should be played in its original form, and the concert was given in February 2013 but the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Bokor.
This was a big concert which was televised, and I managed t get an audio recording of the whole piece.
When I was in Hong Kong in October, I had the chance to interview Hanson Yao, an unfamiliar name to many, but a highly successful guitar maker and manufacturer. His company, which he started with his wife Jenny in Guangzhou, is Altamira Guitars, which sponsors many guitar events both in China and the west.
I ask him how he started and how the company has grown over the last seven years to producing 28,000 guitars a year with 120 workers, all of whom have been personally trained by Hanson at the factory in Guangzhou.
His recent venture has been the opening of a guitar shop containing his workshop in Hong Kong, which is already becoming a centre for Hong Kong guitar activities (during the interview, David Russell was giving a masterclass in the shop).
As well as guitars, the shop also sells violins, and Altamira will be sponsoring CD recordings for Naxos of prizewinning guitarists in many of its competitions throughout China.
I was lucky enough to produce just such a recording with the 14 year old prodigy Kuang Junhong which is to be released in December, and the hope is that there will be many more.
This enthusiasm for the guitar and hard work to get it established commercially in China is an undertaking which many of us could learn from – here’s to Hanson and Jenny’s continuing success.
This special concert was part of the London Guitar Festival, and there were other interesting events happening during the day as well.
I discovered that Jack Hancher and Haydn Bateman, both formerly NYGE members were playing on the Aspire Stage programme, and so were Julian Vickers and Dan Bovey (also former NYGE alumni) on the Young Artist Platform. Wonderful musicianship and exciting playing and a great taster for the main event that evening. I particularly enjoyed the Vickers Bovey performance of Pierre Petit’s Toccata and Joe Cutler’s Every Day Music, which was given its World Premier, and the Hancher Bateman Duo’s exciting Rodrigo Tonadilla.
Later on, at the reception before the Eden Stell concert, there were many luminaries of the guitar world present, including the duo’s former teacher at the Royal Academy, Michael Lewin and David Russell, who had just flown in from Korea. Tom Kerstens, the genial organiser of the festival was also in evidence.
The concert was superb – a testament to the duo’s hard work and lively approach to the art of chamber music making.
Every nuance in the pieces by Couperin and Rameau was captured, even more so than on the harpsichord for which they were written. Johannes Möller’s “When Buds are Breaking” was similarly expertly and delicately realised.
The staple guitar duo pieces by Sergio Assad (Jobiniana) and Piazzolla (Tango Suite) were thrilling to hear and given a freshness so characteristic of the Eden Stell Duo.
But the revelation of the evening was Mark Eden’s masterly arrangements of Canciones y Danzas by Frederic Mompou – these are magical piano miniatures whose reference to Catalan folksong will be familiar to guitarists though Llobet’s arrangements. The spare texture and simple yet emotionally charged world of Mompou fits the guitar perfectly.
The concert ended with the duo’s signature four handed encore. A CD is due to appear next year, and I am ready to pre-order it!
The evening was a wonderful tribute to Mark and Chris’ twenty five years of playing together, showcasing their subtlety, expert insight, virtuosity and above all their sense of fun which I have been privileged to be party to ever since they formed their duo.
I was not able to record any of the concert, but here is a short video of Chris and Mark warming up before:
Here are some photos of the occasion:
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Some videos of the Eden Stell duo in action if you can’t wait to hear them live
selftaughtgirl has this to say about this wonderful concert, which most of the known guitar world in the UK at the time attended:
“John Williams gave a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (UK) on 19th July 1989 which was broadcast live on the radio. I was at the concert so a friend pressed the record button for me. I remember JW limping onto the stage as he had hurt himself playing tennis and also him reading the Ponce from the score. I last heard him only a couple of weeks ago playing two concertos at the RFH (the main hall next door to the QEH) and still on fine form.
Villa-Lobos: 5 Preludes
Ponce: Variations and fugue on “La Folia”
Brouwer:Elogio de la Danza, Berceuse, Danza Characteristica
Barrios: La Ultima Cancion, Cueca, Aconquija, Choro de Saudade, Waltzes Op 8 Nos 3 & 4
Piazzolla: Verano Portena (as encore)”
This is a marvellous record of a great performance. Thank you, selftaughtgirl!
A few years earlier, the newly reformed “John Williams and Friends”, of which I was a part, toured the UK, Ireland and Italy. Unlike this concert, there were quite a few hi jinx on stage (including Brian Gulland, taking a break from his bassoon duties,dressed as a chef and making an omelette while JW and I played some duets!).
