Grammy Award winner Sharon Isbin calls herself “an accidental guitarist.”
When their family had moved to Italy, Isbin’s brother had decided he wanted to take guitar lessons.
“My parents got excited because the teacher had studied with Segovia, and was touring all over Italy, but when my brother met him and realized it was classical, he said, no way, I want to be Elvis Presley. So, I volunteered to take his place,” said Isbin in an interview with KGNU.
Isbin has gone on to release over 35 albums — her latest, Romántico, was released May 2025 and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s accompanied — and is the chair of the guitar department at The Juilliard School, a position she created in 1989 when she became the first guitar instructor at Juilliard.
At 4 p.m. today in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, she will play alongside the Pacifica Quartet as part of the first Chautauqua Chamber Music Guest Artist Series performance of the summer.
This isn’t their first soirée: Isbin and the quartet first played together at the Aspen Music Festival and went on to record Souvenirs of Spain & Italy together.
The Pacifica Quartet has Grammys under its belt, as well and has served as quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The members of the quartet are passionate about including and playing contemporary music. They debuted Israeli-American composer Shulamit Ran’s Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory in Toronto and later at the Lincoln Center.
The quartet is comprised of violinist Simin Ganatra, violinist Austin Hartman, violist Mark Holloway and cellist Brandon Vamos. The four of them are not only the quartet-in-residence but faculty members at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Mark Holloway feels that he has been training to be in a quartet for his whole life.
“One could argue that the greatest repertoire for the viola lies in chamber music, and that the string quartet is its perfect medium, so I explored it early and often,” he said in an interview on the quartet’s website.
Today’s program includes Vivaldi’s Concerto in D major for Guitar and Strings, RV 93; Francisco Tárrega’s “Capricho Árabe;” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Four for Tango.”
