In this special “children’s concert” (for all ages), composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp will present a panorama of American styles on the acoustic guitar including blues, folk, and jazz as well as demonstrate some of the many sounds that a guitar may produce when played in unconventional ways. Finally, he will put all of this together in a typical composition of his drawing together the sonic and the traditional, a composition that is dynamic, rhythmic, and riveting both for eyes and ears.
Elliott Sharp: Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound-artist central to the experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years, Sharp has released over 200 recordings spanning the musical spectrum. He leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction as well as pioneering use of computers in live improvisation. His compositions have been performed by the RadioSinfonie Frankfurt, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Kronos Quartet, and Zeitkratzer and collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, blues legend Hubert Sumlin; playwright Dael Orlandersmith; cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti; and jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake. His “Quarks Swim Free” premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera “EmPyre” premiered at the 2006 Biennale. Sharp’s most recent CD releases include “Racing Hearts-Calling-Tessalation Row” with the RadioSinfonie Frankfurt which won the 2004 German Critics’ Prize; his solo guitar “Quadrature”; the string quartet “Dispersion Of Seeds” and “Forgery” with Terraplane. He founded the ongoing zOaR Records in 1978 both for his own productions including the critically-acclaimed compilations “Peripheral Vision” and “State Of The Union” and for other radical music. He has recently completed the feature-film scores “What Sebastian Dreamt” and “Commune”. Sharp’s sound installations for museums and galleries include “Fluvial”, “Chromatine”, “Tag”, and “Distressed Vivaldi”.