Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.
A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over 30 years, Elliott Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from orchestral music to blues, jazz, noise, no wave rock, and techno music. He leads the projects Carbon and 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 Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry; Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Kronos String Quartet; Ensemble Resonanz; cello innovator Frances Marie Uitti; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; pipa virtuoso Min-Xiao Feng; jazz greats Jack deJohnette, Oliver Lake, and Sonny Sharrock; multimedia artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.
Sharp has composed scores for feature films and documentaries; created sound-design for interstitials on The Sundance Channel, MTV and Bravo networks; and has presented numerous sound installations in art galleries and museums. He is the subject of a new documentary "Doing The Don't" by filmmaker Bert Shapiro.
Playlist :
Jim O'Rourke & Elliott Sharp : Kola Superdeep Borehole (Sakuraza - zOaR Records - 2021)
Elliott Sharp : Transient (Ism - zOaR - 1982)
Elliott Sharp / Zeena Parkins : Pinball Logic (Psycho-Acoustic - Les Disques Victo -1994)
Elliott Sharp : Turbulence (Fractal - Dossier - 1986)
Elliott Sharp / Soldier String Quartet : Dirunal (Tessalation Row - SST Records - 1987)
Boodlers - Elliott Sharp, Fred Chalenor, Henry Franzoni : Buckshot (Boodlers - Cavity Search - 1995)
Elliott Sharp / Orchestra Carbon : X-Tactic (Abstract Repressionism: 1990-99 - Les Disques Victo - 1992)
David Fulton / Elliott Sharp : Peru (Hara - zOaR - 1978)
Steve Buscemi & Elliott Sharp : Rub Out The Word (Rub Out The World - Infrequent Seams - 2016)
Picture © Andreas Sterzing