Elliott Sharp & Friends

Sat 05 Mar, 2011, 5pm

Elliott Sharp’s 60th birthday celebration continues with a collection of his long-time friends and collaborators performing his music at ISSUE’s space at the Old American Can Factory. Among Sharp’s works to be performed are Flexagons (Orchestra Carbon), Octal (Elliott Sharp solo), Oligosono (Jenny Lin, piano), Bootstrappers (JG Thirwell, Anthony Coleman, Melvin Gibbs, Don McKenzie, and Sharp), Amygdala (Marco Cappelli, guitar), and an all-guitar version of Sharp’s SyndaKit. The celebration begins at 5:00 with an open Flexagons rehearsal and continues until late.

Admission to the Flexagons rehearsal and Q&A with ISSUE Board Member and longtime collaborator Luke DuBois is free and open to the public.

This is the second night of a celebration of Elliott Sharp, E#@60, which begins March 4 at 110 Livingston with the premiere of Elliott's new work for double string quartet, Occam's Razor. Join us to celebrate our friend and supporter at this special event.

ELLIOTT SHARP is a central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City of over thirty years and a long-time supporter of ISSUE Project Room. Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, he leads the projects Carbon, Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane, and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; Debbie Harry, Perry Hoberman; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette, Sonny Sharrock, Oliver Lake, and Billy Hart; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka, Morocco. Sharp’s work was featured in the New Music Stockholm festival (2008), at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale (2007) and the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007).

The evening begins at 5 pm and continues until 12:30 am:

Photo by Andreas Sterzing

5-7 pmFlexagons, a new composition by Elliott Sharp performed by his Orchestra Carbon and conducted by Butch Morris: Open rehearsal and Q&A with ISSUE Board Members Luke DuBois.

7:30-8:30 pm: screening of Bert Shapiro's documentary on Sharp's work "Doing The Don't."

8:30-8:50 pm: Elliott Sharp solo: excerpts from Octal for 8-string guitarbass  (20')

9:00-9:50 pm: Flexagons performance (45')
with Curtis Fowlkes-trombone, Chris McIntire-trombone, Jenny Lin-piano, Danny Tunick-percussion, vibraphone, Kevin Ray-bass, Reuben Radding-bass,  Judith Insell-viola, Rachel Golub - violin, Ha-Yang Kim-cello, Briggan Krauss - alto sax, Oscar Noriega - reeds, E#-guitar, reeds

10:00-10:30 pm: Oligosono by Sharp:  piano solo performed by Jenny Lin (20')

10:40-11:20 pm: Bootstrappers: JG Thirwell-electronics, Carl Stone-electronics, Anthony Coleman-piano, Melvin Gibbs-bass, Don McKenzie-drums, E#-guitar (30')

11:30-11:45 pm: Amygdala by Sharp: guitar solo performed by Marco Cappelli (15')

12:00-12:30 am: All-Guitar SyndaKit (30') with Ben Tyree, Marco Cappelli, Angela Babin,  Marc Sloan, Ron Anderson, Zach Layton, Dave Scanlon, Debra  DeSalvo,  James Ilgenfritz, Anders Nilsson

Meet the Composer's Creative Connections