Sound: News and Events
Thursday, September 19, 4:30 p.m.
MacLean Center, 112 S. Michigan Ave., room 522
Elliot Sharp will outline the sonic processes at work in a number of current projects including the string-quartets Tranzience for JACK Quartet and Mare Undarum for Sirius Quartet. In addition to structural and acoustic strategies, techniques described will include alternate bows made of springs and ball-chain and using graphic-editing software such as GIMP and Photoshop to process standard notation to create graphic scores. Sharp will have his 8-string electroacoustic guitarbass to demonstrate sounds and approaches.
Sharp is a composer, performer, and producer who leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, Terraplane, and Tectonics and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetics to musical composition and interaction.
In March 2013, Sharp's composition Storm Of the Eye commissioned by violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn for her Encores project was premiered. His composition Turing Test for the Neue Vocalsölisten Stuttgart premiered at the Venice Biennale October 2012 and Then Gone in December. Also in 2012, his Oneirika for the ensemble Zeitkratzer premiered at MaerzMusik Berlin and Persistence of Vision for the Sonic Visions Orchestra (conducted by Sharp) premiered at Sonic Visions Festival Reutlingen. He was commissioned by Issue Project Room to create Occam's Razor for double string-quartet for his birthday marathon E# @ 60 in 2011. In 2010, Sharp directed, wrote, and composed About Us, a science-fiction opera for all-teenage performers at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. In 2009, his music-theater work Binibon premiered at The Kitchen. The Boreal was commissioned by the WDR Witten Festival in 2009 and premiered by JACK Quartet and Proof Of Erdös also by the WDR for Ensemble Resonanz. He has been featured at New Music Stockholm, Donaueschingen Festival, Darmstadt Festival, and Au Printemps. Sharp's work is the subject of a recent documentary film "Doing The Don't" by Bert Shapiro and he was featured on NPR All Things Considered in October 2012.
Sharp's collaborators have included the Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry; Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Arditti Quartet; Ensemble Resonanz; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack deJohnette and Sonny Sharrock; multimedia artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka.
His audio installations include Fluvial, a computerized multi-channel audiowork; Chromatine, an interactive string sculpture, and Tag, an interactive audiowork. His electroacoustic work Cryptid Fragments was included in the Bitstreams show at the Whitney Museum, 2001.