Sharon Isbin - Biography (2024)

Acclaimed for her extraordinary lyricism, technique and versatility,multiple GRAMMY Award winner Sharon Isbin was named Musical AmericaWorldwide’s 2020 Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist everto receive the coveted honor in their 59-year award history. She was inductedinto the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America Hall of Fame and received theirArtistic Achievement Award. Hailed as“the pre-eminent guitarist of our time”, she is the winner of GuitarPlayer magazine’s Best Classical Guitarist award, Germany’s EchoKlassik, Concert Artists Guild’s Virtuoso Award, the Toronto and MadridQueen Sofia competitions, and the first guitarist to win the Munich ARDCompetition. Isbin has appeared as soloist with over 200 orchestras andhas given sold-out performances in many of the world’s finest hallsacross 40 countries, including New York’s Carnegie and Geffen Halls,Boston’s Symphony Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’sKimmel Center, London’s Barbican and Wigmore Halls, Amsterdam’sConcertgebouw, Paris’ Châtelet, Vienna’s Musikverein, Munich’sHerkulessaal, Argentina’s Teatro Colón, and Madrid’s Teatro Real. Shehas served as Artistic Director and soloist of festivals she created forCarnegie Hall and the Ordway Music Theatre (St. Paul), New York’s 92NY,and the national radio series Guitarjam.

American Public Television’s acclaimed one-hourdocumentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour has been seen by millions on over200 PBS stations across the U.S. and abroad. Winner of the ASCAPTelevision Broadcast Award, the film is available with bonusperformances on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming on Amazon and PBS Passport. Watch the trailerat:www.sharonisbintroubadour.comOther recent national performances onPBS include the Billy Joel Gershwin Prize with Josh Groban, and TavisSmiley. A frequent guest on NPR’s All Things Considered and A PrairieHome Companion, Isbin has been featured on television throughout theworld, including CBS Sunday Morning, Showtime’s The L Word, and assoloist on the GRAMMY-nominated soundtrack of Scorsese’s Oscar-winningThe Departed. She performed at Ground Zero for the first internationallytelevised 9/11 memorial, in concert at the White House by invitation ofPresident Obama, and as the only classical artist in the 2010 GRAMMYAwards. She has been profiled in periodicals from People to Elle, TheWall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as appearing on thecovers of over 50 magazines.

Isbin’s catalogue of over 35 albums from Baroque, Spanish/Latin and 20thCentury to crossover and jazz-fusion, has sold more than a million copiesand reflects her remarkable versatility. Her Live in Aspen was recordedwith India’s foremost sarod virtuoso Amjad Ali Khan at their sold-outAspen Music Festival concert and released June 2024 for the Festival’s75th anniversary. Her recordings named Best of 2020 feature worldpremieres composed for her: Affinity showcasing Chris Brubeck’s dazzlingguitar concerto along with works by Leo Brouwer, Tan Dun, Antonio Lauroand Richard Danielpour; and Strings for Peace with Khan and his sonsAmaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash in a program of ragas for guitar, sarod andtabla. Her 2019 Souvenirs of Spain & Italywith the Pacifica Quartet showcases beautiful and rarely heard guitarquintets from the Baroque to mid-20th century, including works byVivaldi, 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. Sheappears as a guest artist on bluegrass star Alison Brown’s album OnBanjo released in 2023.

Other recent #1 bestselling titles include Sharon Isbin: 5 ClassicAlbums and Sharon Isbin & Friends: Guitar Passions with rock and jazzguests Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Stanley Jordan andRomero Lubambo. Her GRAMMY-winning Journey to the New World with guestsJoan Baez and Mark O’Connor spent 63 consecutive weeks on top Billboardcharts. Her Dreams of a World soared onto top classical Billboardcharts, edging out The Three Tenors, and earned her a GRAMMY for BestInstrumental Soloist, making her the first classical guitarist toreceive a GRAMMY in 28 years. Her world premiere recording of concertiwritten for her by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun received a GRAMMY andGermany’s prestigious Echo Klassik Award. She received a Latin GRAMMYnomination and GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Music Artist(alongside Melissa Etheridge) for her Billboard Top 10 Classical discwith the New York Philharmonic of Rodrigo Concierto deAranjuez/Ponce/Villa-Lobos concertos, the Philharmonic’s only recordingwith guitar, which followed their Lincoln Center performances with Isbinas their first guitar soloist in 26 years. Other bestselling titlesinclude Baroque Favorites for Guitar with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra,and her GRAMMY-nominated Journey to the Amazon with Brazilianpercussionist Thiago de Mello and saxophonist Paul Winter. Herrecordings have received many other honors, including Recording of theYear in Gramophone and CD Review, Recording of the Month in StereoReview, and Album of the Year in Guitar Player.

Other recordings include J.S.Bach Complete Lute Suites, Aaron JayKernis’ Double Concerto with violinist Cho-Liang Lin and the Saint PaulChamber Orchestra, Wayfaring Stranger with mezzo-soprano SusanneMentzer, and concerti by Joaquin Rodrigo which the composer praised as“magnificent”. She is also featured on the GRAMMY Foundation’s SmartSymphonies distributed to over five million families.

Sharon Isbin has been acclaimed for expanding the guitar repertoire withsome of the finest new works of our time, and has premiered over 80works written for her by world-renowned composers, including moreconcerti than any other guitarist, as well as numerous solo and chamberworks. Works for her by John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner and LukasFoss are featured on her American Landscapes, the first-ever recordingof American guitar concerti. (In November 1995, it was launched in thespace shuttle Atlantis and presented to Russian cosmonauts during arendezvous with Mir.) She premiered Concert de Gaudí by ChristopherRouse with Christoph Eschenbach and the NDR Symphony, followed by theU.S. premiere with the Dallas Symphony. Among many other composers whohave written for her are Joan Tower, David Diamond, Aaron Jay Kernis,Leo Brouwer, Howard Shore, Ned Rorem and Ami Maayani, with highlightsincluding John Duarte’s Joan Baez Suite, and a duo by rock guitaristSteve Vai which they performed in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet. Recentpremieres of works written for her include Of Love and Longing byRichard Danielpour co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 125thanniversary and by Chicago’s Harris Theater; Affinity: Concerto forGuitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck which honors his father DaveBrubeck; Song of a Dreaming Sparrow by Schwantner which she premieredwith the Pacifica Quartet in New York City and on tour in 2022; theNorth American premiere in 2023 of Tan Dun’s Yi2 guitar concerto writtenfor her; the world premiere of Karen LeFrak’s Bailamos with the NationalSymphony in their 2023 Labor Day concert for over 10,000 on the USCapitol Lawn and her Miami Concerto in 2024.

Highlights include tours with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Austria’sTonkünstler Orchestra and Belgium’s Philharmonique de Liege, a week ofperformances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Filarmonica Toscaniniin Milan, MIDEM Classical Awards in Cannes, a 21-city Guitar Passionstour with jazz greats Stanley Jordan and Romero Lubambo, and mostrecently performances with the Detroit, National and MontrealSymphonies, and sold-out recitals in the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’sKimmel Center, and Carnegie Hall including a collaboration with Sting.Her latest partnership, Strings for Peace, with sarod master Amjad AliKhan in an program of ragas in an eloquent and impassioned call for harmony—in music, religion, andculture throughout the world. Strings for Peace debuted on a multi-citytour of India and continues to appear throughout North America.

Isbin has toured Europe annually since she was seventeen, and appears assoloist with orchestras throughout the world, including the New YorkPhilharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Dallas,Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Montreal, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey,Louisville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Buffalo and UtahSymphonies; the London Symphony, Orchestre National de France; and BBCScottish, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Prague, Milan Verdi, Belgrade, BuenosAires, Mexico City, Jerusalem and Tokyo Symphonies; and chamberorchestras including Saint Paul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Scottish andLausanne. Her festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Aspen,Ravinia, Grant Park, Caramoor, Chautauqua, Interlochen, Santa Fe, MexicoCity, 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 StringQuartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, soprano JessicaRivera, a Guitar Summit tour with jazz greats Herb Ellis, Stanley Jordanand Michael Hedges, trio recordings with Larry Coryell and LaurindoAlmeida, and duo recordings with Carlos Barbosa-Lima. She collaboratedwith Antonio Carlos Jobim, and has shared the stage with luminaries fromAretha Franklin to Muhammad Ali.

Born in Minneapolis, Sharon Isbin began her guitar studies at age ninein Italy, and later studied with Andrès Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, and forten years with noted Bach scholar and keyboardist Rosalyn Tureck withwhom she collaborated on landmark editions/recordings of the Bach lutesuites for guitar (Warner Classics/G. Schirmer). She received a B.A. cumlaude from Yale University and a Master of Music from the Yale School ofMusic. She authored the Classical Guitar Answer Book, and is Director ofguitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and The Juilliard School(which she created in l989 becoming the first and only guitar instructorin the institution’s 100-year history). Her students from over 20countries are among the world’s leading performers, and include winnersof Young Concert Artists, Concert Artists Guild, the Avery Fisher CareerGrant, and four 1st Prize winners of Guitar Foundation of America’sInternational Concert Artist Competition.

Sharon Isbin has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since age 17and 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 enjoystrekking in the jungles of Latin America, cross-country skiing,snorkeling and mountain hiking. Please visit her onFacebook,Twitter,Instagram