Crossing the Culture Divide

Isbin, who has recorded the concerto three times (the most recent, with the New York Philharmonic), is intimately acquainted with the work and its creator, who befriended her in Madrid twenty years before he passed away in 1999.

Rodrigo wrote Concierto de Aranjuez while his wife was recovering from the miscarriage of their first child. “He played the adagio every night when he came home from the hospital,” Isbin said. “It is a magisterial work that speaks to human emotions across every cultural divide and communicates conflicts of loss, passion, beauty, love, and longing.”

The St. Louis Park native made her orchestral debut with the Minnesota Orchestra at age fourteen. “It’s what made me decide to be a performing musician,” Isbin recalled. “My focus before had been science and rockets. After that experience, I shifted my focus from launching grasshoppers to practicing guitar.”

She’s known for her fiery technique and liquid lyricism, and some critics think she has surpassed the talent of her most famous teacher, Andrés Segovia—high praise for a woman playing an instrument dominated by men.

One of the preeminent guitarists of our time, Isbin has soloed with more than 160 orchestras and recorded twenty-five albums, including two Grammy–award winners. She’s commissioned more concerti for her instrument than any guitarist in history, and she founded Juilliard’s guitar department in 1989. And wonderfully echoing her grasshopper-launching days, her American Landscapes CD, recorded with the SPCO, was launched into space in 1995 on the space shuttle Atlantis and given to Russian cosmonauts on Mir. Sept. 18–20. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., 612-371-5656