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MICHAEL BARONE: I had a strange sort of off the wall thought that the guitar is one of the few instruments that you can really be-- almost completely physical with. The violinist is always the distance of his bow away from the strings. And the keyboard artist although he can really get in there and be brutal. There's so much mechanism. And then everything else-- the wind instruments just aren't quite it. But here you are.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, that's really true. And I think that's one of the things that attracts so many guitarists to the instrument. It's a very personal touch you have to create the attack yourself and it's all direct contact, like you say with the instrument. And Julian Bream said something very beautiful in an interview once.

He was talking about the quality of the plucked sound and the beauty of its creation and dying, because unlike any other sound, the plucked pluck sound dies of its own, and it goes off into a kind of eternity that really lets your imagination wander and go freely. Because once the sound has been struck, it continues off, and you don't have to employ any kind of mechanism to continue it or to stop it.

And this is the beauty perhaps of the intimate quality, the silence that you create when playing because silence is so important in music, and in the guitar, it becomes even more so.

MICHAEL BARONE: It is simply because of its physical limitations and extremely intimate sound. How do you project a guitar in a large auditorium? How large a house can you profitably play in, musically speaking?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I think that really depends upon the acoustics. Of course, Mets Stadium would be out. But in a place like O'Shaughnessy Auditorium in Saint Paul, which is a fairly large concert hall, there's no problem in hearing the instrument.

MICHAEL BARONE: Without amplification.

SHARON ISBIN: Without amplification. And the only time that this becomes a problem, almost consistently, is when you're playing with full orchestra, and there you do need a microphone to be heard above the other instruments.

MICHAEL BARONE: In a place as large as O'Shaughnessy though, it would seem only natural that much of the intimacy, much of the subtlety of the sound would be lost to a listener, halfway up the balcony.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, perhaps, but in reaching out to the audience, which is what the performer has to do, you somehow get them in the grasp of your own imagination and what thoughts are going through your mind when you're playing.

MICHAEL BARONE: Even if they can't hear they think they can.

SHARON ISBIN: Even if they can't hear. Right. Because what happens is you create a mood, you create an aura, somehow. And this seems to transcend the mechanical aspects a concert hall.

MICHAEL BARONE: Here you are all of 20, and you've got your instrument pretty well settled into. You've developed some fairly cogent philosophies on how to project your performances. When did you begin? Where did the classical guitar enter your life?

SHARON ISBIN: It all happened by accident. It was about 11 years ago. I was 9, and our family had taken a sabbatical year to Italy. And by chance, we heard about a very fine teacher who would commute to our town twice a week, and I began studying with him. I had never heard a concert in my life before on classical guitar, and I really didn't know what I was getting into, but I liked it right from the start.

MICHAEL BARONE: How? I mean, if you had never heard a classical guitar before, how did it occur to anyone in the family that you should start taking lessons on the instrument? Or there were no pianos available, so we'll start sharing on the guitar.

SHARON ISBIN: Well--

MICHAEL BARONE: It's less expensive and easier to carry around?

SHARON ISBIN: No. I think what really inspired my parents was that this teacher, the Italian man had been a student of Segovia's.

MICHAEL BARONE: Who was this teacher?

SHARON ISBIN: His name was Aldo Minella. And I haven't seen him for 10 years, even though I talked to him when I was in Italy this summer. And because of his reputation and the wonderful opportunity, this was good enough reason to start.

And I think my parents knew that I was always attracted to things that were somewhat unique. I had studied the piano for a time, but I felt the need to have something that was somehow different from what everybody else was doing, the guitar at that time, and still now is a special field in its own.

MICHAEL BARONE: How many classical guitarists are there of you? And I'm putting you in the ranks of all of the international stars, so to speak, since you're getting into that realm now.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I think there's really a split in the generations, because if you ask now, who comes to mind in classical guitar, you always think of Segovia, and then the next generation, which would include Julian Bream, and Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz, John Williams, and now a younger generation that is coming up.

There's an amazing interest now in the United States-- well, in all over the world, but the United States and Canada seem to be doing very well in promoting the instrument. There are guitar societies all over the country, and the festival that was held in Toronto, really attests to this interest.

MICHAEL BARONE: Tell me a little about that, that was 1975 right?

SHARON ISBIN: That's right, and it's going to be held every three years. In 1978, they've already have plans for a week long festival and competition. There were 500 people, mostly from this continent there participating, not in the performance necessarily, but attending classes, hearing the concerts, there was a concert every evening, there were workshops and lute construction, contemporary music, everything you can think of.

MICHAEL BARONE: How many contestants in the competition itself?

SHARON ISBIN: There were a total of 16 chosen as semi-finalist, and this was from a set of 30 who had submitted tapes.

MICHAEL BARONE: And you were the winner?

SHARON ISBIN: Right. I think one of the best things that has come from it, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made a two record set about the festival and included performances from the evening concerts as well as from the participants. And this has been distributed, I guess, now already 700 copies have been distributed to radio stations all over the world.

MICHAEL BARONE: I'll take you to Munich momentarily, and you can tell us about that. But what is the average day or month or week of Sharon Isbin?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, there doesn't seem to be an average day or week or month, which is nice in a way. There's a lot of variety in my life. Right now, I'm still a student. I'm in my third year at Yale University. And I took the term off this semester in order to participate in Munich.

And it's interesting trying to combine an academic life as well as musical and personal. And it makes for a very full day.

MICHAEL BARONE: What were the implications of winning the Munich competition as far as your career?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, it's difficult to say now. It's not one of those instantaneous bursts of demand, but I will be returning this summer, I'm making a debut in London in Wigmore Hall in May. And after that, I'll be going to a few of the cities in Germany, where they have radio stations and have been engaged to make some recordings with them.

MICHAEL BARONE: Munich, was this past September. This was the first year, and this is the 25th year of the Munich International Music Competition. This was the first year that there was a guitar division.

SHARON ISBIN: That's correct.

MICHAEL BARONE: And there were, how many entries?

SHARON ISBIN: There were 16 total.

MICHAEL BARONE: From how many countries you recall?

SHARON ISBIN: From about 10. I was the only American. That's right, and also one of two women in the entire competition for guitar.

MICHAEL BARONE: Tell us about some of the behind the curtain traumas of competition life?

SHARON ISBIN: Well--

MICHAEL BARONE: You mentioned in an interview that this was your last, although you told me just a few minutes ago that after Toronto, you had said that was your last.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I think I mean it this time. It's an unnatural thing to go through in that. The tensions and strain of it are so great, you just have to make it a monolithic kind of venture. And at least for me in the 10 days before the competition, I couldn't think about anything else. It just had to be a total channeling of your energies into making it possible to perform under the stress as well as you can.

MICHAEL BARONE: There some sort of stress involved in an actual concert performance that is similar to the competition? Or the competition is even more stressful than just a performance?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I would say concert situation is much, much different. You're not being judged, first of all, the people that come to hear you.

MICHAEL BARONE: To a degree.

SHARON ISBIN: That's true.

MICHAEL BARONE: You have nothing to win at the end except your career and its future, I suppose holds hangs as much in the balance after any concert as it does.

SHARON ISBIN: That's correct. I guess ultimately there's no difference at all, because what you're trying to do is reach towards some sort of artistic ideal and goal. And if that's the motivation at all times, then the competition is really always within yourself.

And it's just much harder to have to come out to an artificial situation. It's a concert hall there may be people in there and you have judges. You play for perhaps 20 minutes. Fortunately, in the one in Munich, it was run so well that you always knew ahead of time what pieces were going to be played and you were never stopped. It was possible to play through the entire repertoire.

But it's the kind of situation where you don't have the time and the luxury to necessarily warm up to an audience and to develop in your own style and your own way. The intensity of your performance, it has to be right there, right on at that moment.

And you have to somehow put all the thoughts out of your mind, about why you're there, what kinds of things are possible should you succeed or not succeed, and simply think about the music. I found for me one of the most helpful ways to relax.

Munich is a very big beautiful city, and there are a lot of places to retreat to. And each time before one of the performances, there were three of them, I took a little tram out to the Schloss Nymphenburg, which is a beautiful old Renaissance Palace, and would just walk in the botanical gardens and meditate and just try to relax, think about everything else, think about the beauty that was surrounding me, the life, the art that so many thousands of people lived in history and present.

And somehow next to all that, the tasks that I had before me paled and didn't seem so significant, it was put in a better perspective. And I think that enabled me to cope with it more.

MICHAEL BARONE: I know what little performing I do that it's incredible, the things that creep into your mind when you're playing and are supposedly concentrating on what your fingers and your instrument are doing. Have you ever found yourself thinking of a completely unhinged something while you're on stage trying to do your--

SHARON ISBIN: Oh, yes.

MICHAEL BARONE: --in your concert best?

SHARON ISBIN: It's very hard to maintain a concentration, and if you can somehow get caught into the flow of the piece, that you're not concentrating on the technique, you're not concentrating on the mechanical aspect of producing the sound, you're just lost in it, then you move along with the music. It's almost like being in a meditative trance.

I do transcendental meditation. I've been doing it for over three years now. And it's the same kind of consciousness of everything about you and yourself. But at the same time, you're at one with it, you're at one with the flow, and you're not really centering in on the distractions that are about you, but you're lost to something higher somehow.

MICHAEL BARONE: I heard an interview with Leonard Bernstein where he talked about the best feeling for him was when he lost all consciousness of everything and felt as though the music, whatever symphony it was, no matter how old was being created, note by note spontaneously during that performance.

SHARON ISBIN: That's a beautiful idea. It's hard to get that kind of ease with the music. And I think for me, it's necessary to have several performances of something before I really feel that I'm discovering the music as it is and what it can mean to me.

MICHAEL BARONE: But then when you do, that's what musicians are in music for.

SHARON ISBIN: That's right. And that's why I enjoy so much the concert situation because that's completing. That's really adding to what I've already brought out of the music. The response from an audience, it's a very--

MICHAEL BARONE: That's the Everest.

SHARON ISBIN: --active thing, yes. Yeah.

MICHAEL BARONE: We can talk about the literature, I guess, in the instrument. Is there anything special about the specific instrument you own? Or how many instruments do you have?

SHARON ISBIN: Right now I have three. I have a hauser guitar, and the Japanese guitar, Kohno, that was given to me in Toronto.

MICHAEL BARONE: How's your being-- how's of local repute?

SHARON ISBIN: Yes, except the Son of the Father. And now I'm playing on a guitar by a local maker. He's from the East Coast and has come to live in Minneapolis. His name is Stephen Kakos. And this is a guitar that I purchased last year, last May, before going to Europe.

MICHAEL BARONE: Subtle differences in quality of tone and the way the tone is projected that differentiate these three?

SHARON ISBIN: Definitely.

MICHAEL BARONE: It's too bad you don't have them here. Could you maybe describe them in words?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, the Hauser's by far the most intimate instrument. It doesn't have the greatest projection in a concert hall. But in terms of richness as an artistic instrument, it's amazing. And the Kohno's are very powerful yet refined and sensitive response. And I enjoyed playing on that, especially coming from the Hauser because it permitted me to open up a lot and to expand and go on to many different levels.

And then the Kakos guitars, are also a beautiful instrument, very sensitive in terms of sustaining quality and melodic quality.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are there certain pieces that you will choose to perform on specific guitars because of these differences in tone quality?

SHARON ISBIN: Probably not.

MICHAEL BARONE: You will choose an instrument for the occasion and play the whole program?

SHARON ISBIN: Right.

MICHAEL BARONE: The tendency of the guitarist is to go off and outside of the strictly guitar repertoire and transcribe, I've noticed from a number of your concert programs that there are transcriptions certainly of lute music, some harpsichord pieces I saw transcribed.

How would you describe the historic literature for the instrument? Is there a certain sameness about the old pieces that require you to make transcriptions of non-guitar works out of the same period, just for the diversity?

SHARON ISBIN: You mean because those in the guitar literature had to be smooth.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are said to be monochromatic.

SHARON ISBIN: That could be true. I think, I've been doing a lot less of that recently. And my interests right now are much more with from the Baroque period on. And especially in contemporary music, I'm trying to encourage contemporary composers to write for the guitar.

Recently, a concerto was completed for me. It's a very exciting project. I received it over the summer, and it's by an Israeli composer, whose name is Ami Maayani. A very talented, outstanding young man, who has done a lot of work for the harp. And this is his first composition for the guitar. It's scored for guitar and full orchestra.

MICHAEL BARONE: Did he do any work with the guitarist in order to familiarize himself with the instrument's capabilities? Did you work with him?

SHARON ISBIN: Yes, we worked together for a while, and since he was in Israel all the summer and I was in Europe, he had to do a lot of research on his own. But I had a chance to discuss a lot of things with him and discuss the instrument and play for him. And since his sensitivity to the plucked instrument already had been built by his compositions and familiarity with the harp, it wasn't too difficult a transference for him to make.

MICHAEL BARONE: Is there any potential for a local performance of this piece?

SHARON ISBIN: I'm hoping for, yes.

MICHAEL BARONE: How many modern works are in your repertoire? I know you play a lot of Stephen Dodgson.

SHARON ISBIN: Also Hans Werner Henze and Leo Brouwer. He's a very unusual composer. He's a guitarist himself. He was one of the judges also at Munich. And he had performed in Canada at the festival. But unfortunately, not too many Americans know about him in concert because he can't play in this country yet.

But he's done a lot to discover new techniques and create different effects, especially with his knowledge of the instrument. And he's a versatile composer. He's done everything from film scores, I guess he has over 50 to his credit now in Cuba, and he also plays jazz and popular music with a band.

MICHAEL BARONE: Do you find yourself outside of you said? I think in a phone conversation we had, that you're starting to work jazz guitar a little bit?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, it's an interest of mine. I doubt that I'll ever get serious enough because it would take an awful lot of dedication to really capture that style and the technique, but I do love jazz music, good jazz music.

MICHAEL BARONE: Do you see yourself ever branching out and being multi-instrument-oriented, such as Julian Bream with his guitar and his lute? Or do you find enough to keep you interested and busy just with the guitar?

SHARON ISBIN: I think it's so difficult to really come to know an instrument. And I just wouldn't have the energy to do it all over again. I admire somebody tremendously, like Bream, who can conquer not only another instrument, but another literature too, and that's part of the task.

I know a lutenist that I met recently from Paris, he plays six different instruments. And there's a different tuning for each one and different fingering techniques, and it's really-- it takes tremendous dedication to a-- you have to be a scholar also because the repertoire for that time in the older music.

MICHAEL BARONE: Is still being rediscovered.

SHARON ISBIN: That's right.

MICHAEL BARONE: Does the lutenist look at the guitarist to transcribes lute music for guitar performance somewhat in the way that a stiff upper lip organist looks at a pianist or at an orchestral conductor who is taking over organ literature for those other mediums?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I think if you can capture the flavor on the other instrument and use it to good advantage rather than to really change the music, then I don't think anybody would disagree with you. I've heard so much lute recently that I have great difficulty thinking now of lute pieces on the guitar. And perhaps that's one of the reasons I've gone so much more into contemporary music.

MICHAEL BARONE: Yeah, that's the thought that has gone through my mind. The more exposure one gets to the real thing, the less one wants to settle for second best. Although transcriptions have always served that purpose of getting the music, getting the notes at least, getting an idea of it out to an audience that would otherwise not hear it at all.

SHARON ISBIN: Right.

MICHAEL BARONE: Many performances do you do in a year? What's your performance schedule been in the past few years? And has it been localized here in the Twin Cities area?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I usually try to do one or two performances a year in Minneapolis, and then in Europe during the summertime, for the last three summers. I've been in Europe on tour. And this last summer was a fascinating experiment, of four and a half months of traveling about Europe. I was in France, and Germany, and Italy, and England.

And started out in June, giving some concerts mostly in Germany, and then into France for a festival at Strasbourg, near the border. And then on to Italy. But I don't really have a schedule yet. I don't have an agent, and this permits me the flexibility to do what I still want to now.

I hope I'll always have that flexibility, I intend to. But this gave me the opportunity to travel, and I was also at a festival in August for three weeks in the French Alps. It was a beautiful experience, teaching and playing. This was a collection of about 40 professional musicians, most of them from Paris and France, other parts of France, who were housed up in the mountains near Mont Blanc in a beautiful hotel, and it was almost like a vacation resort.

There was an informal concert every night, sort of a spontaneous creation, nobody knew what was going to happen until that evening. And there was just a beautiful French exuberance and life about the whole festival. That made it a pleasure to be there.

MICHAEL BARONE: You tour in Europe, I will imagine simply because the ambiance of music in the old country is so much different and seemingly healthier than it is here. I would presume that if you wanted to, you could be spending your summers touring in America, or are there no opportunities for that?

SHARON ISBIN: I've never really tried to, I guess. The first opportunity that was presented to me was a tour of Germany. And from there, it's really branched out. Each time I've gone to Europe, I've met other people who've been able to help me and establish new performances.

MICHAEL BARONE: You've studied both with American guitarists and with European guitarists. Is there an international school of guitar playing? Or are there still very separate and insular ways of teaching and playing the instrument?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, because it's such a personal instrument, I think, there will always be that kind of differentiation. But now the performers have the freedom to travel and travel very quickly all over the world, for example, Oscar Ghiglia from Italy, teaches in this country every summer. And I think, though there will probably never be a standardized technique for guitars, it's becoming a lot more methodical and a lot more possible for students to have the discipline and not struggle so much by themselves.

MICHAEL BARONE: You say you do teaching, here you are a girl of 20 or 21. Your pupils, I would suppose would be of approximately your same age. How do they relate to you, I guess? Do they feel intimidated by someone so extremely talented that is their contemporary?

SHARON ISBIN: I hope not because I try to be myself and be relaxed about what I'm trying to communicate. And I think that I've been so fortunate to have a number of different teachers that I'm eager to share what I've learned from them with other people and also what I've taught myself.

MICHAEL BARONE: Do you enjoy teaching?

SHARON ISBIN: I really do. I learn a lot myself that way. I find that even I began to follow the advice I give others.

MICHAEL BARONE: You don't feel that you only want to spend your time with advanced students you'll work with everyone? Or I mean, someone with a brief amount of competency at least?

SHARON ISBIN: I enjoyed definitely teaching people who have had experience already. And for example, in the class in France, the teaching aspect turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment because most of the students that came there were beginners, and it's not as much a challenge to teach rudiments that so many other people are qualified to teach.

But I think that the whole spectrum in guitar is growing now. For example, not only in age category, but now women are beginning to enter the field. And certainly in the first two generations, there never were any female guitar soloists. And that's something I feel that I'm helping to change, I'm very glad about that. I think it will offer a new perspective in performance, in the possibilities of creation, in composition as well.

MICHAEL BARONE: Is the guitar on the verge of a new popularization, a new breakthrough of the classical guitar, the harpsichord, for instance? The old Baroque style harpsichord has gone through such a rebirth within the past five or six years. Almost every time you turn around, you're tripping over a harpsichord builder, and people who are playing them. Is this happening with the guitar? Has the guitar shown any fluctuation popular interest in or a stable commodity?

SHARON ISBIN: It's growing tremendously. The number of guitar makers has increased. There are so many that I never even hear about. It's very hard I'm sure to be a maker and to promote yourself. Also, I think in the next 10 years, the guitar will achieve a place and a prominence very much like some of the more established instruments-- piano and violin.

Eventually, it will reach that point, where there are so many people in the field, I feel that I'm fortunate to have come into it at a time when it's not overcrowded and there's still a great demand and a need for new performers. One of the things that intrigues me about traveling and performance is that you never know what's going to happen next.

And sometimes this is good and sometimes it can be disastrous. But a few such things happened to me this summer in my four month marathon. And for example, one concert that I did was in Strasbourg, France, and this was at the music festival there.

MICHAEL BARONE: Was that a contemporary festival primarily?

SHARON ISBIN: Not of contemporary music, per se. They had [INAUDIBLE], they had Alfred Brendel and Christa Ludwig, a selection of different performers. And I had to leave at 1:00 AM in the morning following the concert. And was scheduled to give a concert 14 hours away by train in Italy, on the Adriatic Coast. And I nearly got on the wrong train to begin with, but then ended up on the right one with a change in Milan, which was delayed, of course.

And I finally got to Rimini, which is the city I was scheduled to play for, and discovered that I'd neglected to get anybody's phone number or address in the city. And I'm stuck at the train station there. I don't have any of the [INAUDIBLE] to operate the telephones with. You can't use regular money. And finally in desperation, I just told a taxi driver to take me to the theater where I was supposed to play.

And he brought me to the theater, and sure enough, there was a big poster. It was a week long festival for a management convention, and this concert hopefully would bring other contacts with international managers. So I'm peering over the poster there, and the concert was scheduled for that evening. It was a Friday night.

I had been traveling that long already, and I couldn't find my name there at all. There were two concerts scheduled for that day, one at 6:00 and one at 9:00, and I was not listed anywhere. At this point, I realized something horrible had happened. And I didn't know where to go. I just decided to take the first hotel that was around.

MICHAEL BARONE: This comes from not having a manager.

SHARON ISBIN: I guess so. And I ended up landing in the hotel that was being used for the musicians of the festival, which was very lucky since the only industry in the city was tourism and there were hundreds of hotels.

[LAUGHTER]

And after about two hours, in broken Italian, I managed to locate somebody who had something to do with the festival. I'd missed the director by five minutes, and it was an amazing sequence of events where they couldn't understand how I had gotten there, what I was doing there, who had invited me, even though I had communications by the phone from Italy confirming everything.

And it turned out that a committee meeting had decided to cancel the concert because they weren't going to bring any guitarists. And I'd been notified by regular mail, which didn't arrive until three months later. And it was just one of those experiences that I never could have predicted. With the language problem not speaking Italian, I was communicating with the manager in German, and then with somebody else in French, and then English.

It was just amazing. But finally, we scheduled a performance for the next night. And I was invited to return again in August.

MICHAEL BARONE: So it had a happy ending?

SHARON ISBIN: Somewhat, yes.

MICHAEL BARONE: Now that you're sort of established or getting your foot in, as they say. Do you still study with someone? Or have you taken your own future in your own hands?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, for the last, I'd say four years during the year, I've studied pretty much by myself, and then in classes, during the summertime, mostly with Oscar Ghiglia. But whenever I had the chance to be with other musicians and get their criticism.

MICHAEL BARONE: Will always learns.

SHARON ISBIN: That right, that helps.

MICHAEL BARONE: Every time you turn around.

SHARON ISBIN: And at Yale University too, there are a number of people on the applied faculty, even though they're not in guitar, they have a lot to say when it comes to say-- [? Baroque ?] performance practice in harpsichord or in composition. I'm majoring in music, and we'll get a bachelor of arts degree when I'm finished with four years. But to this time, most of the classes I've taken haven't been in music anyway.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are there things that you do besides play guitar? Do you have any outside interests?

SHARON ISBIN: I enjoy studying languages and this of course, helps in traveling.

MICHAEL BARONE: How much of that? Did you have before you even started going to college?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, when we lived in Italy, I went to strangely enough, a French school. And that's was where I learned French.

MICHAEL BARONE: How many languages do you speak or can you get by in?

SHARON ISBIN: I get by in French, German, and English.

MICHAEL BARONE: But no Italian?

[LAUGHS]

SHARON ISBIN: A few words now and then.

MICHAEL BARONE: Studies with a man who teaches in Italy, had her first exposure to the guitar in Italy and speaks a few words.

SHARON ISBIN: We had to talk French together. My teacher in Italy. But at that time, I guess I was a pretty stubborn kid.

MICHAEL BARONE: I was going-- the next question was, why haven't you learned Italian? Was that is?

SHARON ISBIN: That's why. But I'm sorry, now I didn't.

MICHAEL BARONE: It's never too late.

SHARON ISBIN: No, it's really in my ear, and I think if I applied myself, I could pick it up.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are there differences in the reactions of audiences in the various European countries to a classical guitarist? Are there some places where you know that they're just completely with you and others were? Well, here's this other musician.

SHARON ISBIN: I think it helps being a foreigner. And that would probably be true for a European or a European coming to the United States. But there always seems to be an appreciation and a greater mystique about somebody who's not from your country. And I found a very, very warm audiences there, responsive audiences too. And they really let when they like something.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are the audiences in Europe substantially different from audiences in America?

SHARON ISBIN: I think, right down to it, no, probably not.

MICHAEL BARONE: How about audiences locally in Minnesota as compared to other audiences in this country? Are you taken for granted? Sharon Isbin, oh, she's that girl from over in the suburbs.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I have a lot of friends here when I play, and that's different than playing for a group of complete strangers. But I think hopefully what happens is that you develop a rapport and a connection right away with an audience.

And I think that's one of the things I'm trying to do now in programming. It always used to be that you'd go to a guitar concert. You sit down, and you can be sure you're going to start out with four lute pieces, and then four pieces a bit more risqué, and then maybe even into Baroque, and then of course you take an intermission, and then start out with maybe classical, and go on to romantic, and end with something that's slightly atonal.

But I find that it's more interesting to start off with a bang, and I'm going to try in my concerts now to play really just music that I get into myself. And if that means starting out with Leo Brouwer or some freaky kinds of pieces to get my own interest going, I'll do that.

MICHAEL BARONE: I had an amazing experience about a year ago, a French organist came to Collegeville and began his program with two right off the desk-- avant-garde French works, just bang. Here we are in rural Stearns County. The audience loved it. It was incredible.

SHARON ISBIN: I think so, that you have to be a lot more daring in experimenting, in creating a program, because that's really half the work of art too. And--

MICHAEL BARONE: Yeah, to create an aura happening.

SHARON ISBIN: Right. And you have to start out with something that you're confident in, that still permits you to warm up to the situation, but yet isn't so dry and subtle that most people are missing it.

MICHAEL BARONE: Are there any pieces that you have a particular rapport with that you'll play for your own ecstasy in quiet times?

SHARON ISBIN: I love to play some pieces by Lauro, who's a Venezuelan composer. He's written dozens of waltzes, and they're wonderful because it's the kind of piece you absolutely can't think about the technique for. You have to just learn them so thoroughly and let them become a part of yourself such that you dive into them, and they come spinning out. It's something that's really loosened me up in playing.

It's sort of a wild kind of expose of yourself. And I also enjoy playing Bach because it's so introspective.

MICHAEL BARONE: Everyone enjoys playing Bach. What a treat.

Got a question?

AUDIENCE: I'm trying to think of some, but.

MICHAEL BARONE: What do you want to know about the classical guitar? And the people who play it?

AUDIENCE: Are there ever any 12 string classical guitars?

MICHAEL BARONE: Maybe you could describe the differences in guitar structures, and how the classical guitar is unlike the guitar that is used by folk singers or popular musicians now?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, generally, it has six strings, although there are some instruments now that have eight strings or 10 strings.

MICHAEL BARONE: Yeah, Narciso Yepes plays a 10 string instrument.

SHARON ISBIN: Right.

MICHAEL BARONE: Does that give him expanded range?

SHARON ISBIN: It does.

MICHAEL BARONE: Those are not double strung courses?

SHARON ISBIN: No, it adds a few bass strings there to give more resonance. And then when he plays lute music, for example, he doesn't have to tune up a lot of octaves.

MICHAEL BARONE: Then there's the 12 string guitar, which is a double.

SHARON ISBIN: Double string. Right. And of course the difference in using metallic strings as opposed to nylon in the treble. A classical instrument, there are always nylon strings.

MICHAEL BARONE: You never play with a pick?

SHARON ISBIN: Not in classical, no. You use your fingernails, which makes it difficult sometimes for people to become classical guitarists because it keeps breaking off. You have to--

MICHAEL BARONE: Lots of jell-o.

SHARON ISBIN: --be very conscious of it. Yeah.

MICHAEL BARONE: And you'll be back in the Twin Cities in the late spring, early summer, I suppose?

SHARON ISBIN: I have a concert at St. Mark's Cathedral, a summer festival in May, spring festival. And then at Walker, I'm doing a joint program with a lutenist from Paris, who will be doing the first half. See what I mean about not being able to play the early music now? I'm giving it over to somebody else.

MICHAEL BARONE: Let him be doing the dry things and you'll come on with--

SHARON ISBIN: No, it's not dry. His name is Aaron [INAUDIBLE] And he's originally Egyptian, and has lived in Paris for a number of years and has now moved to Toronto. And is one of the few musicians I've heard on the guitar or lute or theorbo which he also plays, that can really communicate the Baroque style. And it's really beautiful and exciting that way.

MICHAEL BARONE: So after this year, just more of the same? You seem when you talk about your four month tour of Europe and the various places you've been and the people you come in contact with, I can't imagine your life becoming any better than what it is now, except maybe doing it all year round.

SHARON ISBIN: Well, maybe a little more refined, I don't think I'm going to go to Europe for four months again. That was an awfully long venture. And even though I was doing a lot of different things, it wasn't as though there was a concert every week. I just found it tiring to be moving about so much. And I'm going back for a shorter amount of time, maybe about a month in May. And then probably will return here.

I have at least one more year left at the university. And if I decide to do the master's program, that would mean a fifth year. And after that, I hope to get a teaching position at a major university somewhere, maybe on the East Coast, which would give me some stability too and also the freedom to do performances.

MICHAEL BARONE: Why the East Coast, just out of curiosity, since the Twin Cities area is always looked upon with envy by East Coast folk?

SHARON ISBIN: Well, I don't know yet. I enjoy being in the environment of so many different big cities and I've become very familiar with it-- New York area, Boston, Washington, and I think that has a lot to offer me. I have no definite plans at all, but I do have a lot of roots there.

MICHAEL BARONE: Well, definite plans or no, the future looks bright. And I thank you for your being with me here today.

SHARON ISBIN: Thank you.