Live Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring Fri 23 – Sat 24 April

Patrick Hahn is Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, General Music Director of Sinfonieorchester und Oper Wuppertal and Principal Guest Conductor of Münchner Rundfunkorchester of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. He is one of the most sought after and exciting conductors of his generation.

In his last season as General Music Director in Wuppertal, Patrick Hahn presents Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle in concert across the season with an internationally renowned cast featuring Catherine Foster, Benjamin Bruns, Michael Kupfer-Radecky and Karen Cargill amongst others.

As a guest conductor in the 2025/26 season, Patrick Hahn makes his first appearances at Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Sol Gabetta, Staatskapelle Dresden, WDR Sinfonieorchester with Ilya Gringolts and Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg with Timothy Ridout. Return visits include Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Fazil Say on a five-concert tour in China. Opera highlights include his debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin with Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, Richard Strauss’ Intermezzo at Semperoper Dresden, and Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Bayerische Staatsoper.

Previous seasons’ highlights include his first appearances at hr-Sinfonieorchester, Brussels Philharmonic with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Anastasia Kobekina, RAI with Truls Mørk, and Staatsoper Hamburg with Wagner’s Parsifal. Successful return visits include Wiener Symphoniker in Vienna and on tour and Tonhalle Orchester Zürich.

In his second season as Principal Guest Conductor at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Patrick Hahn was joined by Frank Dupree with his jazz trio for Gershwin’s Concerto in F in a programme which also saw Patrick Hahn on the piano for Antheil’s A Jazz Symphony. His other programmes include Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Kian Soltani alongside Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy. His collaboration with Münchner Rundfunkorchester continues with an all-Johann Strauss programme and Hans Werner Henze’s Requiem.

CD releases this season include an all-Gottfried von Einem album with Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Linn Records and Ethel Smyth’s opera Der Wald with Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal on the CPO label, marking the first time Der Wald is recorded in its original German language.

Aside from his work in classical music, Patrick Hahn accompanies himself on the piano singing cabaret songs by the Austrian satirist and composer Georg Kreisler. As a jazz pianist, he received awards from the Chicago Jazz Festival and the ‘Outstanding Soloist Award’ from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse as the best jazz pianist of the 37th Annual Jazz Festival.

Sean Shibe continues to establish himself as a boundary-pushing force in contemporary classical music. 

Highlights of Shibe’s 2025/26 season include the world premiere of Mark Simpson’s electric guitar concerto ZEBRA at the 2025 BBC Proms, his debut with London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Adès, a residency at the Southbank Centre including his debut with Philharmonia Orchestra under Marin Alsop, a residency at Porto’s Casa da Música, and recital tours across the UK, Europe and the US. This season he premieres works by Tyshawn Sorey, Poul Ruders, Carola Bauckholt and Ben Nobuto. 

Recent engagements include a residency at Wigmore Hall, featuring a special programme marking Pierre Boulez’s centenary with the chamber cantata Le Marteau sans maître (a programme which also went to Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Aldeburgh Festival and the BBC Proms). Shibe also toured the UK with folk fiddler Aidan O’Rourke; collaborated across the UK and Europe with mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska in an innovative exploration of the Orlando myth incorporating electronics, melodica, protest songs and spoken word; and joined tenor Karim Sulayman for a critically acclaimed U.S. tour of their GRAMMY-nominated programme Broken Branches. He also made debuts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and toured Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, performing Cassandra Miller’s concerto Chanter in thirteen concerts nationwide. 

Shibe works closely with a diverse range of musicians and ensembles. In recent years, he has collaborated with The Hallé, BBC Scottish Symphony and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia, The King’s Singers, Manchester Collective, Dunedin Consort, Quatuor Van Kujik, Danish String Quartet, LUDWIG, and conductors Thomas Adès, Krzysztof Urbański, Anja Bihlmaier, Delyana Lazarova and Andrew Manze, flautist Adam Walker, violist Timothy Ridout, singers Allan Clayton, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray and Robin Tritschler, and performance artist Marina Abramović, among others. 

Shibe is an ardent supporter of contemporary music, taking a hands-on approach to new commissions and working with composers to experiment with and expand the guitar repertoire. Premieres to date include works by Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, Cassandra Miller, Sasha Scott, Daniel Kidane, David Fennessy, Shiva Feshareki, David Lang, Freya Waley-Cohen, James Dillon and Mark Simpson. He is equally committed to the canon, regularly pairing bold, new pieces with his own transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s lute suites and seventeenth-century Scottish lute manuscripts. 

Widely praised for his original programming, Shibe’s recordings have consistently garnered critical acclaim, to date receiving six Gramophone Award Shortlistings. His latest solo album Profesión was awarded the 2024 BBC Music Magazine Award. Released the same year, his collaboration with tenor Karim Sulayman – Broken Branches – was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, and his solo album Lost & Found was awarded the OPUS Klassik 2023 Award for Solo Instrument, adding to an OPUS Klassik 2021 Award for Chamber Music Recording, a 2019 Gramophone Concept Album of the Year Award and a 2021 Gramophone Instrumental Award for softLOUD and Bach respectively. His 2026 Pentatone release, Vesper, features world premiere recordings of works for solo classical guitar by Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle and James Dillon. 

Shibe studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with Allan Neave, later continuing at the Kunst-Universität Graz and in Italy under Paolo Pegoraro. He currently serves as a Guitar Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is a former BBC New Generation Artist, a 2012 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship recipient, winner of the 2018 Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award and the 2022 Leonard Bernstein Award, and an ECHO Rising Star during the 2023/24 season. 

See Sean Shibe perform David Fennessy’s THE NOISE Electric Guitar Concerto with the RSNO on 23 and 24 April 2027.