8pm
Elliott Sharp performs “Octal”
In addition to his composing and performance, Sharp has also been an instrument builder, inventor and conceptualist. In 2002, he began a collaboration with luthier Saul Koll to create an electroacoustic 8-string guitarbass which was completed in 2005. Since then, E# has been performing on the instrument, exploring its sounds and potentials. He has composed a suite of pieces, OCTAL (which was released on CD by the Clean Feed label based in Lisbon), that fully melds his huge personal vocabulary of extended techniques and unique compositional and improvisational strategies to the possibilities of this beautifully sculptured guitar.
“Octal is, in large part, a more percussive affair, excepting the second track, which is another exercise in multivalent Ebo-driven drone. For the manic percussion that Sharp executes so well, just check out the astonishing “Antitop and Charm”; it roils and bubbles with precision and muscular grace. The pieces are fairly brief and it is as if Sharp’s imagination is in overdrive in each one… so many and disparate are the ideas that pack each moment.“ - All About Jazz
10pm
All-String Orchestra Carbon performs “SyndaKit”
Constructed of 144 composed cores and a set of simple instructions for their manifestation and manipulation by the players, SyndaKit creates an ever-shifting rhythmic matrix, a pulse bristling with vibrating detail based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids. The sum effect is that of a lifeform that lives to loop and groove, always mutating.
SyndaKit was premiered in 1998 for Elliott Sharp’s Orchestra Carbon and has since been performed by the German group Zeitkratzer, the Beijing New Music Ensemble and ensembles in Vienna, Palermo, Tubingen, Bratislava, Los Angeles, plus many more.
There have been versions of SyndaKit for all guitars, all brass and all percussion but this performance presents SyndaKit for a completely acoustic ensemble of twelve strings: violins, violas, cellos, bass.
Elliott Sharp – Composer/multi-instrumentalist/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, The Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Continuum, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Flux Quartet, Sirius Stirng 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, sci-fi writers Pat Cadigan and Lucius Shepard; jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka. His composition “Quarks Swim Free” was premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera EmPyre was premiered at the 2006 Biennale. He has recently completed the scores to the feature-films “What Sebastian Dreamt”", “Commune” by Jonathan Berman, and “Spectropia” by Toni Dove.