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''On this historic ZOHO release, multiple Grammy Winner Sharon Isbin performs multi-faceted and virtuosic new works for guitar, written for her by four leading composers. From the Africa-influenced El Decameron Negro by iconic Cuban guitarist/composer Leo Brouwer, through the Chinese and Spanish influenced Seven Desires by Tan Dun, to Richard Danielpour's song cycle Of Love and Longing and the jazz and world music-influenced Affinity: Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra by Chris Brubeck: Sharon Isbin gives her inimitable imprint to, and vastly enriches major new repertoire for guitar.''

Kabir Sehgal

Multiple GRAMMY Winner Sharon Isbin has been soloist with over 200 orchestras, made over 30 recordings, and given sold-out performances in the world's finest halls. Winner of the Toronto, Madrid and Munich ARD Competitions, Germany's Echo Klassik and Guitar Player's Best Classical Guitarist awards, she was named the 2020 Musical America Worldwide Instrumentalist of the Year, the first guitarist in their 59-year award history. She performed in Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed, the White House by invitation of President Obama, and as the only classical artist in the 2010 GRAMMY Awards. The documentary Sharon Isbin: Troubadour, seen by millions on PBS and abroad, won the ASCAP Television Broadcast Award. Her GRAMMY-winning Journey to the New World with guests Joan Baez and Mark O'Connor spent 63 weeks on top Billboard charts. Author of the Classical Guitar Answer Book, Isbin has premiered over 80 works written for her, and directs guitar departments she created at The Juilliard School and Aspen Music Festival.

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Press Quotes

'Affinity' by name, affinity by nature, Sharon Isbin's terrific latest recording evinces a wonderful talent for making fully hers what was written for her, regardless of style.

Chris Brubeck's Concerto for guitar and orchestra Affinity is a single-movement work in three sections: the first bright, jazzy and energetic; the second, based on a melody by his father, jazz great Dave Brubeck, mellow and Chopin-haunted; the third a whirling percussive dance infused with foot-tapping Brazilian and Middle Eastern vibes. Though Rodrigo isn't far away, either. Ably accompanied by the Maryland Symphony Orchestra under Elizabeth Schulze, Isbin gives a sparkling, virtuoso account that neatly underscores Brubeck's bountiful musical syncretism, while revealing a wider vista with smaller peaks and valleys visible in the distance.

Though smaller in scale, Brouwer's colourful El Decamerón Negro for solo guitar also boasts three sections but its romantic tale of love and war achieves its intensity through intimacy, Isbin relishing the sweeping scales and arpeggios, the toccata-like textures and the programmatic elements. After a delightful interlude in the form of a duet version, arranged by and performed with Isbin's former student Colin Davin, of Lauro's popular Waltz No 3, Isbin returns to the subject of love with Tan Dun's extraordinary Seven Desires, a surreal courting ritual between flamenco guitar and pipa, and Richard Danielpour's three Rumi settings for voice and guitar, Of Love and Longing, in which she is joined by the soprano Isabel Leonard. Thanks in large part to Leonard's clear diction and languid phrasing, we're suddenly made aware that a more transcendent, spiritual love was with us on the journey all along.

     —William Yeoman , Gramophone August 2020