A selection of guitar music played by Elliott Sharp
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.
Haptikon is a set of very-electric-guitar pieces accompanied by computer. Haptikon may be heard as an outgrowth of E#’s Tectonics project.
released May 5, 2013 on Long Song Records
In August 2023, guitarist Elliott Sharp met with fellow guitarists Sally Gates and Tashi Dorji in his Manhattan recording studio. Ere Guitar celebrates the great art of the guitar, played by musicians who seek new paths and create the current sound of the day.
released June 21, 2024 on Intakt Records
These recordings represent the great art of guitar playing by three exceptional musicians looking for new sonic adventures in search of the sound of our time.
released May 19, 2017 on Intakt Records
The CD of Concert in Dachau is one of Elliott Sharp’s most important recordings as a soloist. Musically it is a kind of remix of different solo programmes for electro-acoustic guitar. But it is more than that. As a jewish musician, Sharp is a descendant of parents who escaped the Holocaust, for which Dachau stands as a synonym. This makes ‘Concert in Dachau’ a very personal and moving statement from a political artist.
released January 1, 2009 on Intakt Records
Sferics is a collection of pieces for solo electric fretless guitar dedicated to the memory of guitarist Sonny Sharrock, a friend and inspiration to Sharp. Using nothing but his guitar, an EBow, and some metal springs, E# elicits a vast array of sounds and textures: luminous drones, industrial klanging, non-tempered zithers and marimbas, fleet jazzy lines.
Sferics was first released by the Atonal label in Berlin in 1995 and has long been out-of-print.
In 2003, Sharp recorded "Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!", an album of interpretations of compositions by Thelonious Monk performed on acoustic guitar. The record was released by the Clean Feed label in 2006 to widespread surprise and acclaim (not to mention some disdain!) Over the next few years, Sharp toured the Monk set alongside his Terraplane band and other projects. This performance was recorded at the club MIles Smiles in Vienna, Austria in November 2007 and is now presented freshly mixed and mastered.
released April 18, 2024 on zOaR Music