SEAN SHIBE AT QUEENS COLLEGE CHAPEL FOR SUMMER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Genius - Sean shibe
The Cambridge Summer Music Festival is alive with Youth. So many concerts feature winners of the BBC Young Musician of the Year award, it’s hard to find the ones that haven’t. In the past few days The Heath Quartet’s magical playing was first talent spotted in 2002 but since then Maxim Calver superb on cello at Selwyn is a recent award-holder as is Jeneba Kanneh-Mason wowing everyone on piano. on Friday before her Proms début Time was when she was most definitely second fiddle to her then more famous brother, but skill and dedication will out and with a nod at Fanny Mendelssohn, she always in the shadow of Felix Jeneba has surfaced as a star – first of all here at the Cambridge Summer Music of course and then last night at the first night of the proms.
The fascinating guitarist Sean Shibe is another winner in every way .We heard him last night, giving a concert en route for California where he’s set to take the West Coast by storm with his wonderful blend of superb technique and quirkily penetrating choice of modern music. As well as Bach of course.
Queens’s College Chapel interior is a suffocating midg modge of unfashionable Victorian styles. Rather like a an over-stuffed Edwardian parlour where every texture and textile is over done, - and there is a distinct absence of spirituality among the eponymous Queens’ statues and wall hangings. So unlike the sparse elegance of Selwyn Chapel with its modernist minimalism, the TKK have thrown everything at the décor – but it might be me, I saw no reference to Jesus at all.
Against this backdrop Sean Shibe gave a brilliantly nuanced performance. Using the guitar as a flute – he foiund the capot for this in the vestry – we were back in the era of JS Bach with a lovely melodic sequence of his work. Stunning in skill and quietly mesmeric , time seemed to fly by in annotoher dimension towards the interval ( sensibly provisioned with simple water) and gave on to a second half of huge contrasts. Clearly a Scot, Sean has researched the early manuscripts of Scottish lute music and he confesses, interpreted them into some delightful pieces of lyrical history.The piece to celebrate the sad death of a 12 year old Queen was outstandingly poignant. But his collection which frankly he has revived contains the first annotated version of Auld Lang Syne. Quite an archive. And delightful to hear it renewed and restored.
Most exciting though were the hyper modernist pieces from Thomas Adès. Very much in tune with the artists of the 1920s , one work dedicated to Max Ernst, their propulsion transferred to guitar showed how universal was the post-war aggression towards conformity and state. One could imagine Marinetti in the audience of the first performances, many take from dramatic -violent – staging of contemporary plays and operas.
For a quiet instrument, this was a stimulating evening.
And finished off superbly with a Cecil Sharpe inspired folk song- sung by none other than the Festival Director Ben Johnson , a friend of Sean . A gorgeous duo they made. If Sean Shibe ever gets a break from his current programme , ( he was on Radio 3 only three days ago) he should team up with Ben Johnson for a ravishing tour together. A fun surprise to end the evening.
