Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility,
GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin has been hailed as “the
pre-eminent guitarist of our time”. She is also the winner of
Guitar Player magazine’s “Best Classical
Guitarist” award, the Madrid Queen Sofia and Toronto Competitions,
and was the first guitarist ever to win the Munich Competition. She has
given sold-out performances throughout the world in the greatest halls
including New York’s Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls, Boston’s
Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, London’s
Barbican and Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Paris’
Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’s Herkulessaal,
Madrid’s Teatro Real and many others. She has served as Artistic
Director/Soloist of festivals she created for Carnegie Hall and the
Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), her own series at
New York’s 92nd Street Y,
and the acclaimed national radio series Guitarjam. She is a frequent
guest on national radio programs including All Things Considered,
St. Paul Sunday, and Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home
Companion. She has been profiled on television throughout the world,
including CBS Sunday Morning and the A&E
Network, and was a featured guest on Showtime Television’s
international hit series The L Word. She has been featured
in periodicals from People to Elle, The
Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, as
well as on the cover of 35 magazines.
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Joaquin Rodrigo and Sharon share a reunion
at his home in Madrid on May 23, l998. |
Ms. Isbin’s catalogue of over 25 recordings—from Baroque,
Spanish/Latin and 20th Century to crossover and
jazz-fusion—reflects remarkable versatility.
She received a 2005 Latin GRAMMY nomination for “Best Classical Album”
and a 2006 GLAAD Media Award nomination for “Outstanding Music Artist”
(alongside Melissa Etheridge) for her Billboard Top 10 Classical disc
with the
New York Philharmonic
of Joaquin Rodrigo’s
Concierto de Aranjuez and concerti by Mexican composer Manuel Ponce and Brazilian
Heitor Villa-Lobos.
This marks the
Philharmonic’s first-ever recording with guitar, and follows their
Avery Fisher Hall performances in June 2004 with Ms. Isbin as their
first guitar soloist in 26 years. Her Dreams of a World:
Folk-inspired Music for Guitar soared onto top classical
Billboard charts, edging out The 3 Tenors,
and earned her a 2001 GRAMMY Award for “Best Instrumental Soloist
Performance” making her the first classical guitarist to receive a
GRAMMY in 28 years. Baroque Favorites for Guitar with the Zurich
Chamber Orchestra features concerti by Bach, Vivaldi and Albinoni,
including four world premieres, and remained on the Billboard Top
10 Classical Chart for over 16 weeks. Her world premiere recording of
concerti written for her by
Christopher Rouse
and
Tan Dun
(composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) debuted as #6 on the
Billboard charts and received a 2002 GRAMMY Award for the
concerto by Rouse, and earned Ms. Isbin her third nomination (“Best
Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra”), as well as Germany’s
prestigious Echo Klassik Award for “Best Concert Recording”.
Her Journey to the Amazon with Brazilian percussionist
Thiago de Mello
and saxophonist
Paul Winter,
a Billboard best-seller in
the U.S. and the U.K., received a 1999 GRAMMY nomination for “Best
Classical Crossover Album”.
Other recent CDs include Artist Profile, Wayfaring Stranger with
mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, Greatest Hits (EMI/Virgin
Classics), and Aaron Jay Kernis’ Double Concerto
(Argo/Decca) with violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Saint Paul Chamber
Orchestra (SPCO) which received a 2000 GRAMMY nomination. Her
eight best-selling titles for EMI/Virgin Classics include J.S. Bach
Complete Lute Suites and concerti by Joaquin Rodrigo which
the composer praised as “magnificent”. She is also featured on
the GRAMMY Foundation’s Smart Symphonies™ CD
distributed to over five million families. Her recordings have received
many other awards, including “Critic’s Choice Recording of the
Year” in both Gramophone and CD Review,
“Recording of the Month” in Stereo Review, and
“Album of the Year” in Guitar Player.
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Isbin’s American Landscapes CD
afloat in Space Shuttle Atlantis
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Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with
some of the finest new works of the century. She has commissioned and
premiered more concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous
solo and chamber works. Her American Landscapes (EMI/Virgin
Classics) with the SPCO conducted by Hugh Wolff is the first-ever
recording of American guitar concerti and features works written for her by
John Corigliano,
Joseph Schwantner,
and Lukas Foss. (In November
1995, it was launched in the space shuttle Atlantis and presented to
Russian cosmonauts during a rendezvous with Mir.) She has also recorded
the Schwantner with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony. In
January 2000, she premiered the ninth concerto written for her:
Concert de Gaudí by Christopher Rouse with Christoph
Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by performances with Andrew
Litton and the Dallas Symphony, and David Zinman at the Aspen Music
Festival. Among the many other composers who have written for her are
Joan Tower,
David Diamond,
Ned Rorem,
Aaron Jay Kernis
and Leo Brouwer. In 2003, Sharon Isbin premiered the
Joan Baez Suite written for her by John
Duarte.
Ms. Isbin performs 60-100 concerts a season, and her
2005-6
highlights include a month-long U.S. tour with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, as well as
performances in New York’s Town Hall, Washington D.C.’s
Kennedy Center, Boston, St. Paul, Madison, Rome and many other cities.
2004-5 highlights included performances with the
Pittsburgh, Pacific Symphony (Los Angeles), Memphis, Maryland, Oklahoma
and Milan Verdi orchestras, a tour with the Tonkünstler Orchestra
in Vienna’s Musikverein and throughout Austria, recitals in New
York’s 92nd St. Y, St. Louis, Aspen, California, Indiana, Italy and
Prague Spring Festival, and a week of concerto and recital performances
presented by the Théâtre du Châtelet
in Paris, including a world premiere composed by and performed with rock guitarist
Steve Vai.
On September 11, 2002, Ms. Isbin performed at Ground Zero for the
reading of the names memorial and internationally televised broadcast,
which included Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham and the Juilliard
String Quartet.
Ms. Isbin has appeared as soloist with over 160 orchestras, including in
the United States with the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony,
Baltimore, Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, St. Louis, New
Jersey, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Utah, Memphis and Honolulu
Symphonies, the Rochester, Brooklyn, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well
as the St. Paul, New York, and Los Angeles Chamber
Orchestras.
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Sharon at age 9
Varese, ITALY
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Ms. Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was seventeen, and has
also toured Canada, Japan and the Far East, New Zealand, South America,
Mexico and Israel appearing in recital and as soloist with such
orchestras as the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France,
Scottish Chamber, Zurich Chamber and Lausanne Chamber Orchestras, BBC
Scottish, Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Mexico City, Jerusalem and
Tokyo Symphonies. Festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen,
Ravinia, Interlochen, Santa Fe, Mexico City, Bermuda, Hong Kong,
Montreux, Strasbourg, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Prague Spring and
Budapest International Festivals.
As a chamber musician, Ms. Isbin has performed with Nigel Kennedy,
Denyce Graves, Benita Valente, Susanne Mentzer, the Emerson String
Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among others.
She performed a “Guitar Summit” tour with jazz greats Herb
Ellis, Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges; she made trio recordings with
Larry Coryell and Laurindo Almeida, and duo recordings with Carlos
Barbosa-Lima. She has also collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim and
Steve Vai, and shared the stage with luminaries from Aretha Franklin to
Muhammad Ali.
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...with Sheila
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Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age nine
in Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia and Oscar Ghiglia. A
former student of
Rosalyn Tureck,
Ms. Isbin collaborated with the noted keyboardist in preparing the first
performance editions of the
Bach lute suites
for guitar (published by G. Schirmer). She received a B.A.
cum laude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the
Yale School of Music. She is the author of the
Classical Guitar Answer Book,
and is Director of guitar departments at the
Aspen Music Festival
and
Juilliard School
(which she created in l989
becoming the first and only guitar instructor in the institution’s
100-year history).
In her spare time, Ms. Isbin enjoys trekking in the jungles of Latin
America, motorcycling through Greek islands, cross-country skiing,
snorkeling and backpacking.
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