To observe his 70th year, composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, author, and artist Elliott Sharp will present a number of concerts and recordings under the rubric E#@70. Roulette is proud to present the first concert in this series, featuring the world premiere of four new works created for this event and performed by Sharp’s open-ended ensemble SysOrk. Sharp’s work with graphic notation and algorithmic systemic approaches dates back to 1972. His compositions include works for opera, orchestra, string quartet, computer and electronics, and solo instruments and he has been a dedicated practitioner of improvisation.

The pieces include Oksusgenos for bass clarinet and electronics performed by Sharp, two algorithmic scores—Feedback 21 and Viridia—and a long-form animated graphic score titled ReGenerate. Sharp will also perform Over Water, a collaborative work from 2019 featuring video projection by Janene Higgins and guitar work by Sharp.

Elliott Sharp – composer, conductor, guitar, bass clarinet

Danny Tunick – percussion
Weasel Walter – drums
James Ilgenfritz – contrabass
Shayna Dulberger – contrabass
Judith Insell – viola
Ron Lawrence – viola
Rachel Golub – violin
Chris McIntyre – trombone
Terry L. Greene II – trombone
Nate Wooley – trumpet
Lea Bertucci – alto sax, bass clarinet, electronics
Margaret Lancaster – flutes
Payton MacDonald – marimba

Janene Higgins – projection design

SysOrk is a situationally-based ensemble with members gathered together in any locale to realize specific compositions.  SysOrk was launched in Japan in 2012 with concerts in Nagoya and Tokyo performing Sharp’s graphic score Foliage. Editions of SysOrk have also appeared in Berlin, Padua, and Hamburg. With a NYC concert at Roulette in March 2014, SysOrk premiered a new graphic score by E#, Sylva Sylvarum, now available on the zOaR Bandcamp site: https://elliottsharp1.bandcamp.com/album/sysork-sylva-sylvarum

Elliott Sharp is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane. His compositional strategies have encompassed the use of fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithms, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art. In 2015, Sharp was awarded both the Berlin Prize and the Jahrespreis from der Deutscher Schallplatten Kritiks. In 2014 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Center for Transformative Media. He has been featured in the Darmstadt and Huddersfield festivals, New Music Stockholm, Au Printemps-Paris, Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale, and the Venice Biennale. His book IrRational Music, a mix of memoir, cultural discussion, and music theory was published in 2019. He is the subject of the documentary Doing The Don’t and has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Sharp’s composition Storm of the Eye, composed for violinist Hilary Hahn, appeared on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces. His opera Filiseti Mekidesi premiered at the RuhrTriennale in 2018 and his Walter Benjamin opera Port Bou premiered in NYC in 2014 at Issue Project Room and in Europe at Berlin Konzerthaus in 2015. His sound installations include Foliage, Fluvial, Chromatine, and Tag. Sharp’s collaborators have included Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; pianist Cecil Taylor; Ensemble Modern; pop singer Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; Arditti, JACK, and Kronos quartets; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette and Sonny Sharrock; media artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.

Lea Bertucci is a composer, performer, and sound designer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. In addition to her practice with woodwind instruments, she incorporates multi-channel speaker arrays, electroacoustic feedback, timbral approaches to composition, and tape collage. In recent years, her projects have expanded toward site-responsive and site-specific sonic investigations of architecture. Deeply experimental, her work is unafraid to subvert musical expectations.

Bassist Shayna Dulberger has appeared on over a dozen recordings mostly in the free jazz genre. She has performed in ensembles led by William Parker, Ras Moshe, Bill Cole, Charles Gayle, Jonathan Moritz and Chris Welcome. She plays electric bass on Cellular Chaos’s record Diamond Teeth Clenched.

Rachel Golub is a violinist, vocalist, string arranger and session player performing with artists ranging from Sting and Lady Gaga to Jay-Z, Iggy Pop, Andrea Bocelli, and Suzanne Vega. As an arranger and session artist, her performances can be heard on recordings with Ryuchi Sakamoto, Nancy Magarill and many others. Rachel plays with Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Metropolitan Opera, SEM Ensemble, and other symphonic engagements ranging from Star Wars in Concert to Pierre Huyghe’s Antarctic orchestra for ‘the journey that wasn’t’.

Terry L. Greene II has performed as a Trombonist around the world with luminaries such as the David Murray Big Band, Macy Grey, the Roots, Amp Fidler, Tony Allen, and Oliver Lake, among others.

In addition to co-founding the Jazz Passengers, Curtis Fowlkes has been a member of the Lounge Lizards, Bill Frisell’s quartet, and the Kansas City All-Stars; the latter came together for Robert Altman’s film Kansas City and ended up with two CDs and a month-long tour. Fowlkes also toured with Charlie Haden’s reunited Liberation Orchestra in 1996, and with the Ellington Orchestra led by Louie Bellson.

Media artist Janene Higgins works in projection design, single channel video, installation, and video performance. She has collaborated with many of New York’spreeminent composers and improvisors of new music, and her work has been performed and exhibited in galleries, theaters, and festivals worldwide.

James Ilgenfritz is an American composer, bassist, and multi-instrumentalist. As a composer, he is known for his surreal experimental multimedia chamber operas, including The Ticket That Exploded and I Looked At The Eclipse. As a jazz sideman, he has collaborated with Lukas Ligeti and Eyal Maoz (in the trio Hypercolor), Elliott Sharp, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Miya Masaoka, JG Thirlwell, Annie Gosfield, SEM Ensemble, and Ghost Ensemble.

Judith Insell, a New York native, has been an active member of the New York jazz, classical, and pop scene since the mid nineties. Lee Konitz, Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, Antonio Hart, and Miguel Zenon are just a few of the many jazz greats with whom Ms. Insell has had the pleasure of performing and recording. She has performed throughout the eastern United States with the chamber jazz string group “Sojourner.”

Violist Ron Lawrence has performed and recorded with many of new music’s most exciting personalities. Besides being a founding member of the Sirius Quartet, he has performed extensively with Cuartetango, Quartet Indigo, the Soldier String Quartet and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Other collaborators include Anthony Braxton, John Blake, Bob Beldon, Anthony Davis, Regina Carter, James Blood Ulmer, Cassandra Wilson, John Cale, and Eumir Deodato. Further uptown, he has recorded with Kathleen Battle, Robert Craft, John Cage, and Andre Previn.

Payton MacDonald (b. 1974, Idaho Falls, Idaho) is a percussionist, composer, improviser, singer, and filmmaker. He has created a unique body of work that draws upon his extensive experience with East Indian tabla drumming and Dhrupad singing, Jazz, European classical music, and the American experimental tradition.

Christopher McIntyre leads a varied career in music as a performer, composer, and curator/producer. He interprets and improvises on trombone and synthesizer and composes for TILT Brass, UllU duo, and Ne(x)tworks. He has recorded for Tzadik, New World, POTTR, and Mode. Curatorial work includes projects at The Kitchen, Guggenheim Museum, Issue Project Room, and The Stone, and Artistic Director of the MATA Festival (2007-10). cmcintyre.com

Percussionist/conductor/composer Danny Tunick is active in the classical, rock, and jazz scenes in and around New York City. He has worked closely with many dance companies, including Karole Armitage’s Armitage Gone! Dance, Juliette Mapp, Tanya Calamoneri’s Company SoGoNo (“Two by Two”), and is currently working in collaboration with his wife, Action Theater performer Cassie Tunick, as “The 13th Hour of the 26th Day.” He has composed the score for artist/director Jorge Columbo’s film entitled ‘Fishnet Minute.’

Weasel Walter is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who founded the band The Flying Luttenbachers in Chicago in 1991. He has played in the bands Cellular Chaos and Lydia Lunch Retrovirus and is a member of Phonon with Elliott Sharp, Alvaro Domene, and Colin Marston.

Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Nate Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, in addition to collaborating with Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.