The zOaR label was founded by composer/multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp in 1977 to release his own and other radical musics. E# initiated the ongoing Portal Series in 2005 to present some of his most personal projects in signed and numbered limited-editions packaged in custom die-cut sleeves. These are NOT CDR’s – they are professionally pressed and fully compatible. The latest CD in the Portal Series is CUT WITH OCCAM’S RAZOR: two compositions for strings and one for piano in a limited edition of 200.
The Boreal: performed by JACK Quartet
Commissioned by the West-Deutsch Rundfunk in Cologne and premiered by JACK at the 2009 Witten Festival of Chamber Music, The Boreal is Sharp’s 19th work for the classic string-quartet format. Beginning with the Just-Intoned work Tessalation Row from 1986, with every quartet Sharp creates an individual sound-world. For The Boreal’s 15′ duration, Sharp constructed special bows out of ball chain or springs which allows the JACK Quartet to produce unearthly sounds. Recorded live at the 2011 Ostrava Music Days in Czech Republic.
Oligosono: performed by Jenny Lin
Oligosono is a 20-minute piece for solo piano composed by Sharp for Jenny Lin in 2004 that makes use of many of the personal extended techniques he developed on guitar but here translated to the keyboard instrument. Oligosono generates sounds not usually heard coming from a piano in a virtuosic tour-de-force that explores many sonic terrains. Studio recording.
Occam’s Razor: performed by JACK Quartet and Sirius Quartet
Commissioned by ISSUE Project Room for Sharp’s 60th-birthday concert marathon, this double-quartet of 16 minutes was premiered at the March 4 event at the new home of Issue. The title refers to an often-misinterpreted phrase attributed to the 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar Father William of Ockham who wrote “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. In this case, Sharp takes his inspiration from the concept and uses a generative strategy that operates from simple algorithms (or instruction sets) to generate acoustic complexity, an expanding web of sonic relationships. Recorded at Issue and taking advantage of the unique resonant acoustics of the space.some reviews:
Seen and Heard International Concert Review Ostrava Days (5): JACK Quartet both consummate and luminous 9-7-2011: “Elliott Sharp’s piece, from 2010, The Boreal, is simultaneously similar and very different. Like Xenakis, he pushes a lot of noisy, dissonant intervals against each other. He also has developed alternate “bows” for the piece, including ones made with metal springs. Structurally, it alternates between using the bow in a broad range of standard techniques, and rubbing the springs – and chains, too – against the strings, producing sounds that I have truly never heard, via any means or in any situation. Much of it sounds like a scream traversing a wind tunnel, the aural sense of great energy and color shimmering in space, like the atmospheric event from which Sharp gets his title. The writing seems careful, put together with an excellent sense of time and proportion, and within its own language quite varied, always interesting and powerful. Like the aurora borealis, Sharp has created an object that flows and turns in front of us, but at some distance. In Philharmonic Hall, JACK Quartet’s performance was intense but also warm and involving, more satisfying even than their fine recording of an earlier version from the 2009 Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. This is a great piece, a notable signpost in the road of experimental music that parallels the standard classical tradition.“
Seen and Heard International Concert Review 2.4.2006: “Perhaps the most unorthodox was Oligosono by Elliott Sharp, here exploring the inherent resonance of piano strings. From a few sequences that constantly mutate and leave overtones in their wake, the illusion gradually develops of a microtonal instrument, even when there is none. Polyrhythmic tremolos surge and ebb, often creating a dense, fuzzy texture that eventually disintegrates into silence. “
The Brooklyn Rail – 4-2011: ”Describing “Occam’s Razor,” and indeed much experimental music, is challenging, as terms like atonal, atmospheric, sinusoidal, anddissonant fall far short. So, while the piece wasn’t beautiful in the “perfect fifths” sense of tuned strings, mellifluous melody, and major-key harmony, it was absolutely beautiful in Sharp’s cataphonic universe of fractal geometry and chaos theory. Here, we define beauty simply as something not previously experienced, and we crave innovative incomprehensibility, abstract ineffability, and trompe l’esprit (fool the mind) prestidigitation, a hounding half-step behind G-d.”
