Guitarist Sean Shibe to Releease New Album VESPER This Spring

On Friday, April 17, 2026, PENTATONE will release 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