July and August 2026 see outings for Francisco Coll’s Sefarad, his latest work for solo guitar. On 27 July it appeared at the Granada Guitar Festival with its dedicatee Jacob Kellermann; on 13 August it makes its UK debut at the Edinburgh International Festival with Sean Shibe.
Sefarad is cast in four movements – Aire, Suegra, Durme, and Hija. Each is based on a medieval Sephardic song, transformed by Coll’s own compositional idiom. The Sephardi are Jews with historical roots in the Iberian peninsula; their name (Sepharad) comes from the Hebrew word for the region. They flourished there until their expulsion in the late fifteenth century and dispersed to North Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world.
Coll discovered recently that, like nearly a third of Spanish citizens, he himself has Sephardic ancestry. The 16-minute piece expresses Coll’s longstanding fascination with Sephardic culture, especially its music; he has previously drawn on Sephardi folk melodies in Aire (now the first movement of Sefarad) and the flute, guitar, and viola trio …de voz aceitunada.
Sefarad was commissioned by Jacob Kellermann, who premiered the piece in February 2026 as part of a chamber music portrait of Coll at Fundación Juan March – watch the world premiere performance here. In March 2026 he gave the US premiere of the work at the Phillips Collection, as part of their focus on Coll's work. Kellermann previously premiered Durme in Hiroshima in 2024; Aire was premiered by Pablo Sáinz Villegas at the Elbphilharmonie in December 2023.
Shibe has also been a keen champion of Coll’s works for guitar, giving the UK premiere of Turia in its version for chamber orchestra with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Delyana Lazarova in Glasgow in 2024, and the UK debut of its ensemble version with Thomas Adès and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the East Neuk Festival in 2021.
Shibe’s Edinburgh programme also sees him return to Thomas Adès’ Forgotten Dances. The 20-minute work is Adès’ first published work for a solo instrument other than piano; Shibe’s world premiere recording was released on Pentatone in May 2026. Since its premiere at the Wiener Konzerthaus in October 2023, he has performed the work over forty times to date.