"Music can inspire people to change their lives for the better - it can even provide blueprints for that. And of course, it can also ease the pain of existence and provide hope and allow people to think more clearly. I hope that my work can provide insights and clarity, open new pathways not just for hearing but for reflection not just about music and art but about the nature of our existence (and not in a didactic or preachy way, just opening some doors!)"

Elliott Sharp: Psychoacoustic Changes

Elliott 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.

(Elliott Sharp's TERRAPLANE / Photo by Aaron Sarles)

He received the 2015 Berlin Prize in Musical Composition from the American Academy. He has composed scores for feature films and documentaries and has presented numerous sound installations in art galleries and museums. He is the subject of documentary “Doing The Don’t” by filmmaker Bert Shapiro. Elliott Sharp’s TERRAPLANE synthesizes the intersection of country and urban blues with Mississippi fife & drum bands, post-Mingus/Ayler jazz, the sonic innovations of Sharp’s long-running ensemble CARBON and the rhythmic force of the groove, from the shuffle to contemporary dance music. Terraplane has been through many permutations with guest artists including Hubert Sumlin, as well as singer/poets Eric Mingus and Tracie Morris. Delmark Records released "Twenty Dollar Bill" (2024), the new blues single from Elliott Sharp’s TERRAPLANE featuring Eric Mingus on vocals; Elliott Sharp on guitars, keyboards; Dave Hofstra on bass; and Don McKenzie on drums. Written by Elliott Sharp, “Twenty-Dollar Bill” is both a lament about the nature and value of folding money in today’s world as well as a satiric stab at the fact that Andrew Jackson, featured on the $20 bill, was also a slaveholder. The push to replace Jackson with Harriet Tubman, a social activist and abolitionist and escaped slave, has been mired in Congressional inactivity.

Interview by Michael Limnios        Special Thanks: Kevin Johnson & Delmark Records

How has the music influenced your views of the world? Where does your creative drive come from?

Improvising music, that is creating music in real-time, is one of the best preparations one can have for being able to negotiate the changes that life puts you through. Going deep into music allowed me to get a glimpse of infinity, the void, the source of creativity. All creatures have the ability to access their creative impulse - it becomes a question of translating it to the proper portion of the spectrum, whether it be music, sound, visual art, cooking, scientific work - anything and everything!

How do you describe your sound and music philosophy? What's the balance in music between technique and soul?

I see music as psychoacoustic chemical change and I hope that my music opens people's ears, eyes, hearts, and brains. I define "technique" as the necessary knowledge to manifest the music that you wish to create. Technique is not mutually exclusive to soul. All 'real' music reflects the soul of its creator.

"One of the greatest lessons is to listen: to the world around us, to the musicians we're playing with, to the hopes and fears of the people that surround us and listen to what we do. Music is not just an output, it's a multi-directional feedback loop." (Photo: Elliott Sharp, veteran multi-instrumentalist)

What moment changed your music life the most?

At 17 years old, the first time I found myself staring into the void while improvising some music on electric guitar using pedals that I had built. That was when I first understood what it was to create music in resonance with something outside of oneself.

What´s been the highlights in your life and career so far?

I've been very lucky, so many highlights!  A chance meeting with Jimi Hendrix in a music store in NYC, studying with Roswell Rudd, meeting and later working with Cecil Taylor, playing with Nusrat Fateh Ali-Khan, meeting and then working with Hubert Sumlin, hearing my first-string quartet and orchestra pieces performed, performing on David Sanborn's television show Night Music, meeting my wife Janene and celebrating the birth of our twins.

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of?

I miss the plentiful venues for performing live music. Live music is incomparable.  I also miss musicians pushing to make sounds and songs never heard before, attempting transcendence. I fear that the corporate entities that control most people's lives will use AI to reduce humans to drudgery to allow the AIs to create "content" that will completely marginalize the real creative and soulful work made by humans.

What were the reasons that made New York to be the center of artistic/music research and experiments?

It was a combination of low rent and available spaces for experimentation and the ability to present the results to fellow artists and those interested in the arts many of whom came from Europe or Japan.

What is the impact of music on the socio-cultural implications? How do you want the music to affect people?                              (Elliott Sharp / Photo by Andreas Sterzing)

Music can inspire people to change their lives for the better - it can even provide blueprints for that. And of course, it can also ease the pain of existence and provide hope and allow people to think more clearly. I hope that my work can provide insights and clarity, open new pathways not just for hearing but for reflection not just about music and art but about the nature of our existence (and not in a didactic or preachy way, just opening some doors!)

"I see music as psychoacoustic chemical change and I hope that my music opens people's ears, eyes, hearts, and brains."

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in the music paths?

One of the greatest lessons is to listen: to the world around us, to the musicians we're playing with, to the hopes and fears of the people that surround us and listen to what we do. Music is not just an output, it's a multi-directional feedback loop.

John Coltrane said "My music is the spiritual expression of what I am...". How do you understand the spirit, music, and the meaning of life?

The closest I can come to describing my understanding is that it has to with glimpsing the void, which is also the infinite, whether you define it as mathematical or in the cosmic sense. Given that understanding, many of our problems become trivial and that idea of freedom allows us to find solutions to the real-world problems that we all experience.

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