Guitar Passions - Sharon Isbin & Friends

スティーヴ・ヴァイ / スタンリー・ジョーダン / ナンシー・ウィルソン等、豪華ゲストとの共演！
9歳よりクラシックギターのレッスンを始め、セゴビアに師事。そして若干15歳でトロントギターコンクールにて優勝。17歳の頃にはコンサートツアーで世界中を駆け回るようになったグラミー賞受賞歴もある女流ギタリスト。彼女の演奏は卓越した音楽性と、緻密な研究と、並はずれたテクニックだけでなく緊張感のある力強さが特徴で、以前のアルバムでもそうであるようにクラシックだけでなく、様々なジャンルの音楽家と深い友好関係を結んでいます。このアルバムでも、ロック、ジャズ、ポサノヴァなどのアーティストたちと共演し、南米のギター作品などをアレンジし、新たなる切り口で描き出していきます。
ソニー・ミュージック

Sharon Isbin's friends, a combination of old and new associates, are an eclectic lot on this album, and it may seem curious that a disc featuring jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan as well as rock guitarists Steve Morse, Steve Vai, and Nancy Wilson of Heart, not to mention new age saxophonist Paul Winter, would be slated for Billboard's Traditional Classical Albums chart instead of the Classical Crossover Albums chart. The reason is that Isbin has brought her guests into her world, for the most part, rather than venturing into theirs. One exception is a reading of Heart's "Dreamboat Annie," on which Wilson not only plays but also sings a few of the lyrics usually handled by her sister Ann. Morse and Vai bring their electric guitars along and wield them in characteristic ways on Joaquin Rodrigo's Adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez and Agustin Barrios-Mangore's Allegro, respectively, but their playing really just adds color, especially Morse, who only comes in around the nine-minute mark after an extensive interplay between Isbin and Romero Lubambo. Jordan also adapts himself to Quique Sinesi's Sonidos de Aquel Dia, even if the arrangement is his. Actually, a substantial part of the album belongs to Isbin alone, and it is dominated, as may already be apparent, by Spanish material, a point hinted at in the word "Passions" in the title. For example, Isbin takes on an arrangement of Isaac Albeniz's Asturias arranged by her old teacher, Andres Segovia, and concludes with two parts of Mangore's La Catedral. Her major partner is Lubambo, who also joins in on a version of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Chovendo na Roseira." Still, the various guests add interesting flavors to this sampler, and an entire album with one of them might make for an interesting listen. ~ William Ruhlmann

Except in hip-hop music and a few other genres of African-American origin, the multiple-guest-stars "and Friends" format generally comes off as tired. For that reason and several others, this release by American guitarist Sharon Isbin had no right to work as well as it does. Isbin brings together an extremely diverse group of guitarists, including rock's Steve Vai and Nancy Wilson and jazz player Stanley Jordan, throws in a saxophone solo by Paul Winter, includes vocals, and rewrites music as necessary to make pieces like Heart's "Dreamboat Annie" fit the predominant Latin theme. Several of the pieces receive their world premieres here, and all these experiments bump up against purely traditional guitar repertory, like Segovia's arrangement of Isaac Albeniz's Asturias. The album comes together, and is all the more satisfying for being so unlikely, because Isbin has the musicianship and drive to communicate with an audience to make it work. Part of the credit goes to producer David Frost, who sonically coordinates all the forces involved; Vai's contributions to his own arrangement of Agustin Barrios-Mangore's Allegro are delicately balanced against Isbin's playing. Another part is due to Isbin's own talents; she gets an uncannily wide variety of timbres out of the pair of classical guitars she plays. But on top of all this is her sheer musicality: she has the indefinable ability, common to great performers, to combine diverse material and diverse musical forces, and make them all her own. A sterling example of the crossover classical guitar album.