Elliott Sharp

"Part of the craft of being a player is to play in different styles. I've always played blues, and I love playing blues! All these different musics are just part of what I heard while growing up and have practised, studied and played, so I just do it! I try to transform it though, in some way, but you take things and you filter them out through your hands and ears, so they become something other ... still identifiable as where they come from, but you're just adding your own little twist."

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser Elliott Sharp is known for his turbulent style of guitar playing and mathematically structured compositions.

Sharp leads the groups Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, the Ensemble Modern, Continuum, the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Zeitkratzer, the Soldier String Quartet, and the Quintet of the Americas. His collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti, blues legend Hubert Sumlin, and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjouka. Sharp composed music and sound design for computer artist Perry Hoberman's virtual 3d installation Timetable which won the Grand Prize at the 1999 NTT ICC Bienalle in Tokyo. He formed zOaR Records in 1978 to release his own and other extreme musics and produced the critically-acclaimed compilations State of the Union and Peripheral Vision.

Sharp currently lives and works in New York City and travels extensively.