Product Description Camino is guitarist Sean Shibe’s first PENTATONE album, an introspective programme exploring French-Spanish musical borders, a pilgrimage leading from Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante dfunte, Satie’s Gymnopdie No.1 and Gnossiennes 1 and 3, Poulenc’s Sarabande, De Falla’s Miller’s Dance and Homaje, pour le Tombeau de Debussy and Jos’s Pavana triste all the way to Mompou’s Canos i dansas 6 and 10, as well as his Suite compostelana. Shibe has deliberately granted Mompou a central role on this album, as his music demonstrates that melancholy, aimlessness and a whole host of other feelings are not things to be avoided or fixed or solved, but experiences to be felt deeply: not with sad nostalgia, but with genuine wonder and excitement at what this means for the future. In that respect, Camino also documents Shibe’s personal quest to overcome the challenges of a time dominated by Covid-19, and to ultimately see the world anew.Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. Camino is the first fruit of an exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE. Review The album cover shows Sean Shibe shorn of his luxuriant locks; photos inside catch him in the act itself, wielding clippers. It’s all very lockdown. Thankfully, unlike the biblical Samson’s, Shibe’s powers appear unimpaired. ‘Camino’ is the Scottish guitarist’s first recording for Pentatone and follows a string of acclaimed releases for Delphian on which he explores music as diverse as John Dowland’s Forlorn Hope Fancy (9/17) and Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (A/18). This time his attention turns for the most part to the music of that most elegant and introverted of Spanish Catalan composers, Federico Mompou. Shibe’s ability to command a wide dynamic range within a relatively restricted compass naturally comes to the fore. And though his monk-like appearance may sway the imagination somewhat, his exquisite sense of space and unfolding invites comparison with late conductor Sergiu Celibidache’s Zen-influenced performance practice. The album’s title is a reference to Mompou’s homage to Santiago de Compostela, Suite compostelana. I can’t recall ever hearing the opening Preludio beginning like this: lontano ahead of a crescendo leading to such fluidity and firmness. Nor, at 38 seconds into ‘Cuna’, such an exquisitely veiled, whispered quality. This ability to make you really lean in and listen is another feature of Shibe’s playing you’ll encounter passim. Take the morendo at the end of Satie’s Gnossienne No 1. Or the pianistic rendering of the harmonics in Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante d�funte. The recital opens not with a whisper, though, but with a bang. Falla’s ‘Danza del molinero’ is a perfect example of that aforementioned sense of space, coupled with confident shifts in dynamics, tone colour and dramatic momentum. It is the ideal complement to Falla’s Homenaje, an impeccable performance of which is also included. There are innumerable other riches on ‘Camino’, a release that considerably enhances Shibe’s reputation for having one of the most discriminating ears in the business. William Yeoman. -- Gramophone You might think you know what Spanish guitar music sounds like, and you might think it an unexpectedly middle-of-the-road choice for Sean Shibe, who has always appeared more at home in programmes that set your ears slightly off-kilter: for example, juxtaposing whispering lute music with screaming electric guitar works by Julia Wolfe, as on his 2018 album softLOUD. But there’s nothing hackneyed about Camino. It’s a beautifully intimate recording, full of playing that is as far from classical-guitar cliche as a real flamenco dancer is from a postcard of a donkey in a sombrero. -- The Guardian Here, surely, is a world first: the first classical album ever to feature photos of the artist shaving his hea