Edinburgh-born Sean Shibe has an enduring and special relationship with the East Neuk Festival. Its director Svend McEwan-Brown has long been a supporter of Scotland’s classical guitar star, and Shibe has played at least every second year from his debut appearance as a teenager in the chapel at Dunino through a notable 2017 showcase of electric guitar (earplugs were supplied) to multiple concerts at the forthcoming 20th edition. ‘It’s the festival I have the strongest connection to in Scotland still,’ says Shibe. ‘He [McEwan-Brown] was the first one to take a punt and it always feels like a big deal going back.’

This year Shibe will feature at the opening concert with fellow East Neuk regulars, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, playing Rodrigo’s rapturous Concierto de Aranjuez. So far, so standard. But he will also lead audiences on the Shibe Trail, playing three distinct recitals on acoustic guitar, electric guitar and lute in different sympathetic locations across one day, with some of the lute repertoire coming from local Fife manuscripts.

‘Obviously these instruments are really varied,’ he says. ‘The show is in quite an intimate space because the lute is such an intimate instrument. It is often put in halls that are slightly too large but we found something quite nice I think.’ Shibe played lute as a second instrument as part of his studies but picked it up again in earnest during lockdown.

‘We were very quickly saturated with lockdown meditation music,’ he recalls. ‘For me it got tiring quite quickly. But a lot of these baroque and renaissance instruments are designed for that. They are instruments of personal reflection and spiritual edification rather than necessarily performance, so it was really nice being able to have that time with that instrument, playing it to oneself.’

The pandemic pause was a rare bump in a stellar and multi award-winning career which includes recognition as a BBC New Generation Artist, receiving the 2022 Leonard Bernstein Award and a Guitar Professorship at Guildhall School Of Music & Drama. His own relationship with the instrument began when he joined the after-school guitar club at Sciennes Primary School and revelled in his first guitar, bought by his mum from Stringers Of Edinburgh’s erstwhile Newington branch. ‘Later, growing up, the guitar had to justify itself. What’s cool about it to me is how it has such a strong association for so many people in so many different cultures, so there really is a lot to feed off.’

Shibe has a reputation for pushing into unconventional areas of expression and, in particular, commissioning new work to expand the relatively limited classical guitar repertoire. He has just performed a new piece for electric guitar by US composer Tyshawn Sorey at Wigmore Hall and will premiere young British composer Mark Simpson’s Philip K Dick-inspired Zebra, a concerto for electric guitar and symphony orchestra, at the BBC Proms in July.

‘What’s happening increasingly is that there is more of a place for electric guitar in contemporary classical composition,’ says Shibe. ‘What I try to do is not become a rock guitarist playing with an orchestra. I admire so many guitarists of other traditions but I never want to shred in this style. The young Spanish composer Francisco Coll was saying that he feels the guitar is a more suitable instrument for symphonic textures than the piano and I think I’m really optimistic about the future in that way. But I’m wary of saying we need to constantly titillate programmers into presenting us out of sheer novelty. There’s a balance to be struck.’

Sean Shibe plays the East Neuk Festival Opening Concert, Bowhouse, St Monans, Wednesday 25 June; Shibe Trail takes place in various venues, Anstruther, Saturday 28 June.