Like countless youngsters before him, Sean Shibe picked up a guitar while he was at school.

“There was a musical instrument shop that my mother walked past, and there was a guitar there [she bought],” he says. “And at that time, there was a guitar club after school, so I did that.”

However, unlike the vast majority of bedroom guitarists, Edinburgh-born Shibe quickly showed extraordinary aptitude and passion for the instrument. At the age of just 32, he has gone on to become a virtuoso, playing both classical and electric guitar (and renaissance lute) and restlessly pushing the boundaries of the instrument’s capabilities. Gramophone Magazine has described him as “the most interesting voice on the guitar for a generation”.

Unusually, though, even as he was dazzling others with his facility on the instrument, he was beset for years with doubts about his choice.

“Even as an undergraduate, there were times when I was, like, ‘I’m not sure I really like the guitar as an instrument’,” he says. “The guitar has a lot of drawbacks.”

Shibe is referring in part to the classical guitar’s perceived lack of dynamic range, but he has begun to delight in finding ways to address this issue.

“People often trot out that phrase of the guitar being an orchestra in miniature, but that’s as indicative as it is misleading,” he says. “Over time, I think I engaged more with the instrument as a conduit for lots of different colours and a palette of sonority that has a range that instruments like the piano can’t quite encapsulate.”

Shibe is as well known for performing and recording on electric guitar as he is classical guitar. One reason he turned to the instrument more usually associated with rock and pop was to solve some of the classical guitar’s “problems.”