Elliott Sharp: IrRational Music

About

omposer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp celebrates the NYC-return of Slovakia’s Veni Ensemble and the release of Sharp Matters (Mode Records), Sharp’s collaboration with Veni with an evening of intense performance. The show’s date also marks the publication of Sharp’s book IrRational Music—a combination of memoir and thoughts on music, art, and the process of thinking itself, published by TerraNova Books and Found Sound Nation. Sharp opens the program with a solo performance on 8-string guitarbass of selections from Octal and a realization of his graphic score Mare Undarum by SysOrk, his ensemble dedicated to his algorithmic and graphic scores. The second half of the concert features SysOrk together with the members of Veni Ensemble performing three of Sharp’s pieces included on the Mode album: The Hidden Variable, Dispersion of Seeds, and Flexagons, capturing the 2015 collaborations between the composer and Veni at their summer academy in Kosice, Slovakia.

SysOrk is a large ensemble dedicated to performing algorithmic scores, graphic notation, and conductions created by composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp.

VENI Ensemble is the oldest among the still-existing ensembles of contemporary music in Slovakia. Its existence has lasted continually since 1988. It is also the ensemble with the largest number of members in terms of musicians who worked with it or were its guests. It is also the ensemble which gave rise to the greatest number of other groups with wide variety of style orientations and repertoire preferences.