Aidan O'Rourke, Sean Shibe

Bringing together two Scottish musicians who are both embedded in tradition, Guest Curator and folk fiddler Aidan O’Rourke is joined by classical guitarist Sean Shibe as they strip back the conservative ritual around their respective genres.

If you go back far enough, the divides between ‘classical’ and ‘folk’, ‘high’ and ‘low’, ‘formal’ and ‘rustic’ – all those perceived dichotomies dissolve. While many in the classical world are trying to reverse-engineer the blurring of boundaries, in this special collaboration, Aidan O’Rourke is going to the source, unearthing old melodies from manuscripts hidden away in libraries and archives and enveloping these treasures into a new collaboration with acclaimed Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe. The idea is to strip back any conservative ritual around the genres to make something truly new and avoiding any anticipated outcomes that you’d normally hear in a classical / folk partnership.

This new project with Aidan and Sean brings together two Scottish musicians who are both embedded in tradition – let’s call them tradition bearers of their kind – with Sean Shibe carrying a torch for classical music as the broadest possible church and Aidan O’Rourke deep-rooted in Scottish folk culture. Both of them gravitate to the edges of their traditions and thrive on roaming the hinterlands. They would like to find out where they might meet. What shared language they might find in the backstreets, byways and marginalia of ancient Scottish lute and fiddle manuscripts.