The Squid's Ear Magazine


Sharp, Elliott / Sergio Sorrentino: Spilla' (ANTS Records)

'Spilla' means 'to play' in the language of Neapolitan musicians, and playing here are NY guitarist and composer Elliott Sharp and Italian guitarist Sergio Sorrentino, presenting world premier recordings of 4 works recorded live in Vercelli, Italy: two improvisations and two graphic scores performed on electric guitar with incredible technique and passion.
 

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Elliott Sharp-guitar

Sergio Sorrentino-guitar


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A text by Elliot Sharp focusing on Graphic Notation is included in the four page booklet.

Label: ANTS Records
Catalog ID: AG21
Squidco Product Code: 28287

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2019
Country: Italy
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded in Vercelli, Italy, on June 11th, 2018.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Spillá" (meaning "to play" in the secret language of the Neapolitan musicians) is a meeting between two masters of the guitar: Elliott Sharp's continuous innovation meet Sergio Sorrentino's mastery of interpretation. Recorded live in 2018 in Vercelli (Italy) here we have the surprising and effervescent rendition of two Sharp's graphic scores: "Hudson River Nr. 6" (1974) is an early experiment and is part of a series of scores derived from topographical maps superimposed to musical staff and then manipulated by the author.

"Liquidity" is part of a latter approach (2011) working on fragments of pre-existent musical notations heavily manipulated at the computer by Sharp. Both the scores deals with visual art as well as contemporary music, and are conceived to give to the performers (better, interpreters), the broader informations to "walk-in" the scores (following conceptual images and/or "sonorous" instructions).

The rest of the disc is comprised of two long improvisations where Sharp and Sorrentino takes the occasion to use the most varied (and "extended") guitar techniques, spanning all the range of contemporary "guitarism". All the pieces are World Premiere Recordings. The CD Cover image is a modified detail of the score of "Hudson River Nr. 6". "-Ants



"[...] Of a different nature are the duelling guitars of Elliott Sharp and Sergio Sorrentino. Eliott Sharps has been around for some close to forty years, working with jazz, noise, rock, no wave and whatever else. Sorrentino plays mostly contemporary music (which is what we sometimes call modern classical music) - see also Vital Weekly 1139 for a release by him where he performs works by John Cage, Alvin Curran and Elliott Sharp. Here they perform four pieces; two of these are graphic scores by Sharp, and two are improvisations. Funnily enough, I couldn't tell them apart. All four pieces, forty-eight minutes in total, sound like improvisations and in this, we hear both men exploring the realms of the guitar. There are loud, hectic combinations, but also quieter moments. The guitar is something that can be recognized as such. They both play electric and aren't shy of using feedback and distortion, which I found most enjoyable. It adds a brutality factor to the music, which we do not always hear in improvised music. Both men act and respond and show that they both have been around, doing this kind of thing for many years. My least favourite piece is the opening one, 'Hudson River Nr. 6', which seemed somehow a bit too careful, or perhaps too normal. The real fire for me was in the three other pieces when they opened up and went to extremer lengths in firing each other up. Then the real dialogue started and it drove them to great heights."-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly


A text by Elliot Sharp focusing on Graphic Notation is included in the four page booklet.

Get additional information at Vital Weekly

Artist Biographies

"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.

Sharp is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2014 Fellow at Parson's Center for Transformative Media. He received the 2015 Berlin Prize in Musical Composition from the American Academy in Berlin. He has composed scores for feature films and documentaries; created sound-design for interstitials on The Sundance Channel, MTV and Bravo networks; and has presented numerous sound installations in art galleries and museums. He is the subject of a new documentary "Doing The Don't" by filmmaker Bert Shapiro."-Elliott Sharp

-Elliott Sharp website (http://www.elliottsharp.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Sergio Sorrentino is "one of the most important contemporary italian guitarists" (RAI Radio Tre). As a performer he promotes the classical guitar and electric guitar contemporary repertory.

As a composer and improviser his music is based on sonic research and combines elements of contemporary classical music, minimalism, avant-garde, ambient, experimental.

His CD Dream - American Music for Electric Guitar (Mode Records) contains works for electric guitar by John Cage, David Lang, Jack Vees, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Curran (a new piece especially written for this CD), Morton Feldman (world premiere recording on physical CD of "The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar"), Christian Wolff (complete works for solo electric guitar and the world premiere of "Going West"), Larry Polansky, Van Stiefel. Dream was reviewed and highlighted in the New York Times by Seth Colter Walls as one of the "Week's Best Classical Music Moments".

He plays with the great Gavin Bryars as a member of the Gavin Bryars Italian Ensemble.

He studied with Francesco Langone, Angelo Gilardino, Mario Dell'Ara, Leo Brouwer, Mark White (Berklee College of Music Summer Course) and composition with Marco Di Bari. In 2010 he obtained the Academic Guitar Diploma with Honors at the Novara Conservatory, with a thesis on Italian avant-garde guitar music. Sorrentino started his international concert career very early and has held solo concerts and master classes in many important festivals and venues (Yale University, Sprague Hall in New Haven, Spectrum in New York, Festival de Música Contemporánea de La Habana in Casa de Las Américas, Cuba, Italian Cultural Institute of Paris, Sala Biala of the Wilanow Museum (Warsaw, Poland), International Guitar Research Conference/University of Surrey (UK), Vortex in London, Performance Room of Luxembourg, Highscore Festival, Filharmonia Gorzowska Concert Hall, ON Cologne Neue Musik Festival, In Situ Art Society in Bonn, Spectrum in Berlin, Music Society of La Scala Theater of Milan, Goldoni Theater of Venice, Nuova Consonanza Festival in Rome, Lagonegro International Guitar Festival, Società del Quartetto of Vercelli, Auditorium Renzo Piano of L'Aquila, SpazioMusica Festival of Cagliari, Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte di Montepulciano, AngelicA Festival of Bologna, etc.). In 2012 he performed, with the Gorzow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Joaquin Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" for guitar and orchestra with Cecilia Rodrigo, the composer's daughter, as a special guest).

He has worked with important composers and musicians like Sylvano Bussotti, Azio Corghi, Bruno Canino, Alda Caiello, John Russell, Machinefabriek, Steven Mackey, Andrzej

Bauer, Marco Angius, Giorgio Battistelli, Carlo Boccadoro, Mauro Bonifacio, I Solisti Aquilani. He plays in duo with the great contemporary music guitarist Magnus Andersson and with the vibraphone player Antonio Caggiano. He has debuted many new guitar solo compositions (in concert and on CD). Many composers including Alvin Curran, Mark Delpriora (Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard), Mauro Montalbetti, Stefano Taglietti, Luca Lombardi, Tom Armstrong (University of Surrey, UK) have written special pieces just for him.

Van Stiefel (West Chester University) composed especially for Sorrentino "Bound", a Concerto for electric guitar and orchestra.

As a sound artist he has made performances and sound installations at MACRO, Palazzo Merulana, Mercati di Traiano (Rome), Art Site Fest (Turin) and he has made performances for Baldo Diodato exhibitions and Gillo Dorfles exhibition (Palazzo Reale, Milan).

Sorrentino has recorded for Mode Records, Rai Trade, Creative Sources, Silta Records, Carish, Curci, Sinfonica, Aton Records, Fratto9, Setola di Maiale. He released CDs based on contemporary classical guitar music (Tempus Fugit, pieces by Maderna, Corghi, McKenna Lee, Cifariello Ciardi and others), New Music for electric guitar (Music from a parallel world, pieces by Taglietti, Corghi, Montalbetti, Canino, De Rossi Re, Franco), impro and electronic projects (among others Vignettes with Machinefabriek). Sorrentino also released the Sylvano Bussotti Complete Music for Solo Guitar, including the World Premiere of Popolaresca, an unedited manuscript by Bussotti. As a composer, he has won the First Edition of the International Competition of Guitar Composition "Goffredo Petrassi" of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, with the piece "De Citharae Natura" for solo guitar.

Casa Ricordi and Universal have published his transcriptions for classical and electric guitar of the Azio Corghi's compositions "Tang' Jok(Guitar)" and "De Nocturno Visu".

He teaches master class in contemporary classical and electric music for the Viotti Institute in Vercelli."

-Sergio Sorrentino Website (https://www.sergiosorrentinoguitarist.com/biography)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Hudson River Nr. 6 11:58

2. Allerosa 16:22

3. Liquidity 9:10

4. Bitkorn 10:11

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Guitarists, &c.
Duo Recordings
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Graphic Scores

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ANTS Records.


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