Skip to main content
Home

Scotland Unbound

Submitted by Paulius Gutauskas on
Scotland Unbound
Saturday 16th Nov - 8:00 PM
Llewellyn Hall
Presented by
Australian Chamber Orchestra

The Australian Chamber Orchestra is celebrating fifty years in 2025 and is one of the most acclaimed chamber orchestras in the world, renowned for their inspired programming, unrivalled virtuosity, energy and individuality. Under the direction of Artistic Director Richard Tognetti, they take audiences on the adventure to create truly transformative experiences. 

Guitarist Sean Shibe makes his Australian debut in this inspired and thrilling season closer.

Sean Shibe plays guitar without limits. He is a chameleon of the new generation: he’s met with acclaim in the great recital halls of the world (and his recent Bach album was described by Gramophone Magazine as “the best-ever Bach recording on guitar”), but he also forges new horizons by ranging fearlessly beyond classical music. You can’t help but get carried away with his magic.

For his Australian debut, Shibe celebrates his Scottish heritage in a thrilling ride through the Highlands and beyond.

With Shibe on classical guitar and Tognetti directing the strings of the ACO, the concert opens with a Scotland steeped in lore. Lady Margaret Wemyss died in 1648 at the untimely age of 18, but her legacy lives on in the haunting solo music she collected in her family’s Fife castle. These tunes are interspersed with the irresistible rhythms of Scottish folk songs, while a new commission from Cassandra Miller, one of the most soul-stirring composers writing today, brings this rich history right up to date.

Then tradition is thrown to the wind as Shibe takes up his electric guitar and the ACO steps into a technicolor world of musical invention. Martyn Bennett’s Bothy Culture takes inspiration from the 90s rave scene in Edinburgh while being rooted in the traditions of the Highlands and ancient cultures. Lad, by Julia Wolfe, originally composed for nine bagpipes and arranged here for electric guitar and strings, has been described by the composer as a “dive into a psychedelic landscape, at once multilayered, fractured, ecstatic, silent, driving, cacophonous, and direct.”

At just 32, Shibe is one of the most exhilarating young stars performing today, and a perfect match for the electric energy and musical curiosity for which the ACO is famous. This is the concert you’ll reflect on in years to come: “I saw him when…”

Program:

TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH Solo lute manuscripts compiled by Lady Margaret Wemyss
JAMES MACMILLAN (arr. George Duthie) From Galloway
TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH Suite of folk songs
CASSANDRA MILLER New Commission for solo guitar and strings (Australian Premiere)*
JULIA WOLFE (arr. electric guitar and strings) Lad (Australian Premiere)
DAVID FENNESSY Hirta Rounds (Australian Premiere)
MARTYN BENNETT (arr. electric guitar and strings) Bothy Culture: Selections

*Co-commissioned by the Dunedin Consort (supported by John Ellerman Foundation), Barbican Centre, Saffron Hall, Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Cheltenham Music Festival.

Artists:

Richard Tognetti • Director & Violin
Sean Shibe • Classical & Electric Guitars

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Acknowledgment of Country

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.