Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility,
multiple GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin was named Musical America
Worldwide’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist ever
to receive the coveted honor in their 59-year award history. She was inducted
into the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America Hall of Fame and received their
Artistic Achievement Award. Hailed as
“the pre-eminent guitarist of our time”, she is the winner of
Guitar
Player magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, Germany’s Echo
Klassik, Concert Artists Guild’s Virtuoso Award, the Toronto and Madrid
Queen Sofia competitions, and the first guitarist to win the Munich ARD
Competition. Isbin has appeared as soloist with over 200 orchestras and
has given sold-out performances in many of the world’s finest halls
across 40 countries, including New York’s Carnegie and Geffen Halls,
Boston’s Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s
Kimmel Center, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’s
Concertgebouw, Paris’ Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’s
Herkulessaal, Argentina’s Teatro Colón, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. She
has served as Artistic Director and soloist of festivals she created for
Carnegie Hall and the Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), New York’s 92NY,
and the national radio series
Guitarjam.
American Public Television’s acclaimed one-hour
documentary
Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over
200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad. Winner of the ASCAP
Television Broadcast Award, the film is available with bonus
performances on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming on Amazon and PBS Passport. Watch the trailer
at:
www.sharonisbintroubadour.com
Other recent national performances on
PBS include the
Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and
Tavis
Smiley. A frequent guest on NPR’s
All Things Considered and
A Prairie
Home Companion, Isbin has been featured on television throughout the
world, including
CBS Sunday Morning, Showtime’s
The L Word, and as
soloist on the GRAMMY-nominated soundtrack of Scorsese’s Oscar-winning
The Departed. She performed at Ground Zero for the first internationally
televised 9/11 memorial, in concert at the White House by invitation of
President Obama, and as the only classical artist in the 2010 GRAMMY
Awards. She has been profiled in periodicals from
People to
Elle,
The
Wall Street Journal and
The New York Times, as well as appearing on the
covers of over 50 magazines.
Isbin’s catalogue of over 35 albums from Baroque, Spanish/Latin and 20th
Century to crossover and jazz-fusion, has sold more than a million copies
and reflects her remarkable versatility. Her
Live in Aspen was recorded
with India’s foremost sarod virtuoso Amjad Ali Khan at their sold-out
Aspen Music Festival concert and released June 2024 for the Festival’s
75th anniversary. Her recordings named Best of 2020 feature world
premieres composed for her:
Affinity showcasing Chris Brubeck’s dazzling
guitar concerto along with works by Leo Brouwer, Tan Dun, Antonio Lauro
and Richard Danielpour; and
Strings for Peace with Khan and his sons
Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash in a program of ragas for guitar, sarod and
tabla. Her 2019
Souvenirs of Spain & Italy
with the Pacifica Quartet showcases beautiful and rarely heard guitar
quintets from the Baroque to mid-20th century, including works by
Vivaldi, Boccherini and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and debuted at #1 on Amazon;
her
Alma Española with opera star Isabel Leonard,
the first Spanish art song album with guitar of its kind in 40 years,
was honored with a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year. She
appears as a guest artist on bluegrass star Alison Brown’s album
On
Banjo released in 2023.
Other recent #1 bestselling titles include Sharon Isbin:
5 Classic
Albums and
Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions with rock and jazz
guests Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Stanley Jordan and
Romero Lubambo. Her GRAMMY-winning
Journey to the New World with guests
Joan Baez and Mark O’Connor spent 63 consecutive weeks on top
Billboard
charts. Her
Dreams of a World soared onto top classical
Billboard
charts, edging out
The Three Tenors, and earned her a GRAMMY for Best
Instrumental Soloist, making her the first classical guitarist to
receive a GRAMMY in 28 years. Her world premiere recording of concerti
written for her by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun received a GRAMMY and
Germany’s prestigious Echo Klassik Award. She received a Latin GRAMMY
nomination and GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Music Artist
(alongside Melissa Etheridge) for her
Billboard Top 10 Classical disc
with the New York Philharmonic of Rodrigo
Concierto de
Aranjuez/Ponce/Villa-Lobos concertos, the Philharmonic’s only recording
with guitar, which followed their Lincoln Center performances with Isbin
as their first guitar soloist in 26 years. Other bestselling titles
include
Baroque Favorites for Guitar with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra,
and her GRAMMY-nominated
Journey to the Amazon with Brazilian
percussionist Thiago de Mello and saxophonist Paul Winter. Her
recordings have received many other honors, including Recording of the
Year in
Gramophone and
CD Review, Recording of the Month in
Stereo
Review, and Album of the Year in
Guitar Player.
Other recordings include J.S.Bach
Complete Lute Suites, Aaron Jay
Kernis’
Double Concerto with violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Saint Paul
Chamber Orchestra,
Wayfaring Stranger with mezzo-soprano Susanne
Mentzer, and concerti by Joaquin Rodrigo which the composer praised as
“magnificent”. She is also featured on the GRAMMY Foundation’s
Smart
Symphonies distributed to over five million families.
Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire with
some of the finest new works of our time, and has premiered over 80
works written for her by world-renowned composers, including more
concerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamber
works. Works for her by John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner and Lukas
Foss are featured on her
American Landscapes, the first-ever recording
of American guitar concerti. (In November 1995, it was launched in the
space shuttle Atlantis and presented to Russian cosmonauts during a
rendezvous with Mir.) She premiered
Concert de Gaudí by Christopher
Rouse with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by the
U.S. premiere with the Dallas Symphony. Among many other composers who
have written for her are Joan Tower, David Diamond, Aaron Jay Kernis,
Leo Brouwer, Howard Shore, Ned Rorem and Ami Maayani, with highlights
including John Duarte’s
Joan Baez Suite, and a duo by rock guitarist
Steve Vai which they performed in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet. Recent
premieres of works written for her include
Of Love and Longing by
Richard Danielpour co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125th
anniversary and by Chicago’s Harris Theater;
Affinity: Concerto for
Guitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck which honors his father Dave
Brubeck;
Song of a Dreaming Sparrow by Schwantner which she premiered
with the Pacifica Quartet in New York City and on tour in 2022; the
North American premiere in 2023 of Tan Dun’s
Yi2 guitar concerto written
for her; the world premiere of Karen LeFrak’s
Bailamos with the National
Symphony in their 2023 Labor Day concert for over 10,000 on the US
Capitol Lawn and her
Miami Concerto in 2024.
Highlights include tours with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Austria’s
Tonkünstler Orchestra and Belgium’s Philharmonique de Liege, a week of
performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Filarmonica Toscanini
in Milan, MIDEM Classical Awards in Cannes, a 21-city Guitar Passions
tour with jazz greats Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, and most
recently performances with the Detroit, National and Montreal
Symphonies, and sold-out recitals in the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s
Kimmel Center, and Carnegie Hall including a collaboration with Sting.
Her latest partnership,
Strings for Peace, with sarod master Amjad Ali
Khan in an program of ragas in an eloquent and impassioned call for harmony—in music, religion, and
culture throughout the world.
Strings for Peace debuted on a multi-city
tour of India and continues to appear throughout North America.
Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was seventeen, and appears as
soloist with orchestras throughout the world, including the New York
Philharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Dallas,
Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Montreal, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey,
Louisville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Buffalo and Utah
Symphonies; the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France; and BBC
Scottish, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Belgrade, Buenos
Aires, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Tokyo Symphonies; and chamber
orchestras including Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Scottish and
Lausanne. Her festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen,
Ravinia, Grant Park, Caramoor, Chautauqua, Interlochen, Santa Fe, Mexico
City, Bermuda, São Paulo, Hong Kong, Montreux, Strasbourg, Paris,
Athens, Istanbul, Ravenna, Prague and Budapest festivals.
As a chamber musician, Isbin has performed with the Emerson String
Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, soprano Jessica
Rivera, a Guitar Summit tour with jazz greats Herb Ellis, Stanley Jordan
and Michael Hedges, trio recordings with Larry Coryell and Laurindo
Almeida, and duo recordings with Carlos Barbosa-Lima. She collaborated
with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and has shared the stage with luminaries from
Aretha Franklin to Muhammad Ali.
Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age nine
in Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and for
ten years with noted Bach scholar and keyboardist Rosalyn Tureck with
whom she collaborated on landmark editions/recordings of the Bach lute
suites for guitar (Warner Classics/G. Schirmer). She received a B.A.
cum
laude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the Yale School of
Music. She authored the
Classical Guitar Answer Book, and is Director of
guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School
(which she created in l989 becoming the first and only guitar instructor
in the institution’s 100-year history). Her students from over 20
countries are among the world’s leading performers, and include winners
of Young Concert Artists, Concert Artists Guild, the Avery Fisher Career
Grant, and four 1st Prize winners of Guitar Foundation of America’s
International Concert Artist Competition.
Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17
and donates her time to perform benefits for the David Lynch Foundation,
along with Katy Perry, Sting, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno,
to bring TM to at-risk communities. In her spare time, she enjoys
trekking in the jungles of Latin America, cross-country skiing,
snorkeling and mountain hiking. Please visit her on
Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram
