Saturday 5 June 2010, 8pm
Elliott Sharp is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer and central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years. 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 as well as the use of personal computers in improvised music. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry, computer artist Perry Hoberman; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack de Johnette, Sonny Sharrock, Arthur Blythe, Oliver Lake, and Billy Hart; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka from Morocco.
The documentary film about Sharp's work by Bert Shapiro, "Doing The Don't", has just been released on DVD and screened at international film festivals. See trailer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrIPMVIO_Po
Elliott Sharp: Tectonics
" I've not heard an album this year that successfully combines the naked freedom of jazz improvisation and the alien crunch of digital mechanisms with more feistiness and self- confidence" - Pitchfork Media
A major figure in New York's downtown scene for years, Elliott Sharp has experimented relentlessly with electronics over the course of his career. He's more recently started using computers and invented instruments, the most well-known of which is the guitarbass. He's a multi-instrumentalist who also plays percussion and saxophone -- but don't let any of that intimidate you. Sharp's work is pretty accessible. His innovative efforts have concentrated on producing unusual textures and timbres, but he employs familiar devices too: infectious rhythms, steady tempos. His works, for all their newness in some areas, are lucidly constructed, ogically paced, and full of interesting dynamic and textural contrasts. On this multilayered disc, Sharp plays all of the instruments. He's got a huge palette from which to choose, given the electronic equipment at his disposal. But Sharp isn't just experimenting. He's making music and is selective about what he puts into it. In fact, his orchestration, if it can be called that, is pretty lean, and he builds his pieces gradually, creating ambiences rather than jumping abruptly from one thing to another. Some of these tracks have a hypnotic quality, something like Indian music. There's also a free jazz influence here. If you haven't heard Sharp's work, you should. He's created his own style, and although he continues to refine it, his achievements to date have already had considerable impact and will continue to do so for some time. -- Harvey Pekar
LINKS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrIPMVIO_Po
Elliott Sharp (guitar, sax)
John Edwards (contrabass)
Tony Marsh (full percussion)
John Butcher (reeds)
solos, duos and a quartet
Tony Marsh
Tony has been a stalwart of the London improvising scene since the 1970s. He has played with many of the key figures in European improvisation. He is currently playing with: the London Improvisers Orchestra; Evan Parker; Paul Dunmall; Harry Beckett; Tom Mix and many others.
Tonight Tony will play a full percussion set.
LINKS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBNbC_8BaU
http://www.visionlogic.demon.co.uk/biog1_TM.htm
John Butcher ’s music ranges through free improvisation, composition, multi-tracked saxophone pieces and work with live electronics, amplification and feedback. He is well known as a solo performer and has recently released Resonant Spaces which explores extreme acoustics. He has composed pieces for Polwechsel, Elision, the Rova Saxophone Quartet and "somethingtobesaid" for his own Octet. He started playing the saxophone while studying physics, but, after finishing a doctorate on quantum chromodynamics, he left academia and focused on music - working in the '80s with Chris Burn, John Russell, Phil Durrant, Paul Lovens and Radu Malfatti. In the early 90s he joined what became the final version of John Stevens’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble and also began playing with Derek Bailey and Phil Minton. Recent projects include Thermal with EX guitarist Andy Moor & Thomas Lehn, The Contest of Pleasures with Axel Doerner and Xavier Charles, and duos with Steve Beresford, Fred Frith, Akio Suzuki and many more.
LINK
http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/
John Edwards
Since taking up the double bass in 1987 and playing with the Pointy Birds and the Cholomondeleys dance company he went on to play with B Shops for the Poor, The Honkies and GOD as well as busking in the street and composing and performing music theatre with The Great Explorers. Since the early 1990s he has built a reputation as one of the finest, and most in demand bass players currently active on the British and European improv/ jazz and New music scenes- a first choice for musicians such as Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, Veryan Weston, Charles Hayward and Spring Heel Jack- Other groups include BRUISE and the Obliquity trio with Alan Wilkinson and Noble.
A solo double bass cd ‘VOLUME’ was released in 2008 on the PSI label.
LINKS
