Sharon Isbin

Sharon Isbin is an American classical guitarist, widely regarded as one of the leading guitarists of her generation. She has commissioned and premiered numerous concertos, championed the guitar's place in the orchestral repertoire, and recorded extensively, including Grammy-winning albums. Listeners come to hear her clarity, lyricism, and idiomatic command of Spanish and Latin American repertoire alongside contemporary works written for her.

Isbin plays with a singing, unforced tone that lets the guitar's quiet volume carry across a full orchestra without strain, a balance she has spent decades refining with conductors and arrangers. In Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, expect her to shape the famous slow middle movement's melody with unhurried rubato, so the give and take of tempo feels sung rather than measured, while the outer movements have a crisp, dancing rhythmic snap. She favors clean articulation over blur, letting individual notes in fast passagework register distinctly rather than washing together. Her phrasing tends to breathe with the guitar's natural decay, holding back rather than rushing to fill silences. Audiences unfamiliar with the guitar concerto repertoire can expect a performance that treats the instrument as a full partner to the orchestra, not a novelty.

Sharon Isbin was born in 1956 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She studied guitar from a young age and went on to further training at the Aspen Music Festival and in conversations with major figures of the classical guitar tradition, later teaching and refining her own approach. She has directed the guitar department at the Juilliard School since founding it in 1989, building one of the most prominent conservatory guitar programs in the United States. Over her career she has commissioned new concertos from a range of contemporary composers, expanding the repertoire available to guitarists. She has recorded extensively for major labels, with several albums receiving Grammy Awards. She continues to perform Concierto de Aranjuez and other staples of the Spanish and Latin American guitar repertoire with orchestras across the United States.