Composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Elliott Sharp is not usually associated with the world of jazz even though it was an important influence for him. His decades-long love of the music of Thelonious Monk is here manifest for the first time in an evening of Monk classics.
In this program, E# applies the unique vocabulary and syntax of his recent acoustic guitar CD “The Velocity of Hue” to such Monk tunes as Misterioso, Epistrophy, and Round Midnight using a handmade Dell Arte “grande bouche” copy of a 30′s Selmer Maccaferri guitar in the style of that used by Django Reinhardt."
“If much of his previous work has found beauty in extremes of intensity, he reverses course here, creating a cumulative intensity from extremes of beauty.” Steve Smith, Time Out
“The playing is elegiac, lyrical and passionate, and uses several extended techniques of finger-tapping, harmonics and fretboard noise as well as subtle sinuous acoustic feedback to extend notes at will. Few other players have managed to liberate the language of steel blues so completely - one is reminded of Leo Kottke’s more surreal passages… Most of all, though, the music has an extraordinary saturated living colour, as the title track (and its title) Velocity Of Hue so succinctly suggest.” Nick Southgate, The Wire