Sean Shibe
Shibe was an absolute gentleman, talking us through each piece, and playing to the wonderfully attentive audience with virtuosic confidence and class.
Three years ago Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe performed at Norwich Playhouse as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, an early evening concert that included works by Bach and Villa Lobos as well as pieces from the Scottish lute manuscripts, all performed on classical guitar. This year he has brought his electric guitars along, and we are in the Adnams Spiegeltent for a one hour show that starts at ten o'clock – not by any means late for the nightbirds, but late enough if it is your sole reason for coming into the city.
In contrast to the previous evening's packed out show with Peggy Seeger and Callum MacColl, the ambience is more comfortable than crowded tonight, with cabaret-style seating replacing the regimented rows of tightly-packed chairs, and with an appreciative audience of around a hundred being treated to sixty minutes of enigmatic selections from Shibe's eclectic electric repertoire.
In a change to the advertised running order, a seated Shibe begins the performance with Olivier Messiaen's 'O Sacrum Convivium!', a slow and tentative piece with gentle circles of sound introducing a sanctuarial air to the Spiegeltent. Needless to say, the smoke machine still belched out its own 'atmospheric' fog, and the razzamatazz lighting remained order of the day.
Lisa Illean's seven minute piece 'Tiding' has a mesmerising and unduating tranquility, broken only by the wail of police sirens tearing through the city and past Chapelfield Gardens. Played by Shibe with gentle clarity and depth, he still creates an arresting sonic tone that captures the elemental beauty of the sea.
The centrepiece of the performance is 'Electric Counterpoint', originally written in 1987 by Steve Reich for American guitarist Pat Metheney. Consisting of three movements – fast, slow, and fast, this hypnotic, yet riotous, celebration of cosmopolitism is pitched against West African rhythms and a throbbing bassline. Whilst being generally opposed to pre-recorded backing tracks during live music performances, I am more than happy to make an exception for this piece. Although it has been played live with 11 guitars and two basses, it is more usual to be presented in this way, with the solo artist pre-recording the remaining parts. The result, in this case, is a sparklingly clean rendition, Shibe's live guitar work throwing kinks into the interpolating patterns to create a glorious sense of sonic opposites moving together in flexible synchrony.
Equally as exciting is Shibe's interpretation of Julia Wolfe's 'LAD', written as a tribute to her friend John F Lad who died in 2007. Originally scored for nine bagpipes, it features a lonesome droning lament that builds into an ascendent roar, creating a sound not unlike that of a jet engine preparing for take-off, before returning to land for its cathartic and redemptive conclusion.
And finally, in a change to the previously published programme, Shibe concludes with a piece based on medieval abbess Hildegard von Bingen's 'O Choruscans Lux Stellarum', turning her sacred monophony into a tapestry of rich patterns that spiral against a rattling rhythm.
Whilst this was a purely electric performance, the evening was nowhere near as avant-garde or cacophonous as the publicity photo of Shibe, in his red jumpsuit and striking an anarchistically Clash-like pose, might have suggested. Indeed, Shibe was an absolute gentleman, talking us through each piece, and playing to the wonderfully attentive audience with virtuosic confidence and class.
But in the Spiegeltent? At 10pm? On a Wednesday? Really?
