Elliott Sharp

E# is a composer and multi-instrumentalist living in New York City. Besides writing music for Hilary Hahn, RadioSinfonie Frankfurt, JACK Quartet, and the Ensemble Modern, he performs solo and with his bands TerraplaneCarbon, and Aggregat. He has collaborated with Hubert Sumlin, Debbie Harry, Christian Marclay, and Bachir Attar and is the subject of the recent documentary Doing the Don’t. 

Bio

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, free improvisation, no wave, and electronic music. Having played in a number of bands; Hi Sheriffs Of Blue, Mofungo, Semantics; and Bootstrappers, he leads the projects Elliott Sharp / Carbon and Elliott Sharp / Orchestra Carbon, Elliott Sharp: Tectonics, and Elliott Sharp's Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. To this date Sharp has collaborated with various musicians and composers, including; David Fulton, Andrea Centazzo, Phillip Wilson, Anthony Coleman, Nels Cline, William Hooker, Joey Baron, Scott Fields, Merzbow, Bachir Attar, Soldier String Quartet, Thurston Moore, Frances-Marie Uitti, Bobby Previte, John Duncan, Melvin Gibbs, Charlotte Hug, Thomas Dimuzio, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Franck Vigroux, Michiyo Yagi, Lucas Niggli, Natsuki Tamura, Vernon Reid, Bruno Chevillon, Lance Carter, Wayne Horvitz; and Reinhold Friedl, among others. 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. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Talks

Elliott Sharp Talks Mogwai’s Rave Tapes

By Elliott Sharp | January 30, 2014

Elliott Sharp Talks Mogwai’s Rave Tapes

Hitting "play" and hearing the first strains of Rave Tapes transported me back to September 2010 and Mt. Ezu in Japan, site of Metamorphose...

Elliott Sharp Talks Richard Thompson’s Electric

By Elliott Sharp | April 12, 2013

Elliott Sharp Talks Richard Thompson’s Electric

The title alone: simple, direct, and loud. Electric. It gets me. But then all of Richard Thompson's titles have a quality that hooks and...