Tenor Karim Sulayman & Guitarist Sean Shibe

Featuring music written for guitar and its cousins and ancestors—including vihuela, lute, and oud—this program examines East/West relationships and the nationalist narratives of the instruments over their vast history. Repertoire (and distances) range from Claudio Monteverdi’s Mediterranean-crossing “La mia Turca” to Tōru Takemitsu’s California-sun-kissed “Wainscot Pond” and includes the premiere of Lebanese composer Layale Chaker’s “A Butterfly in New York.”

Quotations of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez come through an arrangement of “Li Beirut” by Fairuz, and distorted translations of Chinese poetry by sinologist Arthur Waley are rendered lucid through Benjamin Britten’s Songs from the Chinese. Karim Sulayman (Lebanese-American) and Sean Shibe (British-Japanese) have chosen repertoire that inspects their own ethnic identities through songs that could be seen to exotify and other, but through playful juxtaposition subvert this narrative to instead celebrate.