Elliott Sharp: 'Die Grösste Fuge' ("The Greatest Fugue"), a time travel opera
$25 advance, $30 doors ($20 student/senior 65+ with ID)
- Elliott Sharp, electronics
- Nicholas Isherwood, bass-baritone
Beethoven becomes unmoored from reality and visits our time, witnessing its beauties and horrors—inspiring him to compose his final work: Die Grösse Fuge.
On Thursday, June 13, 2024 at 8pm Eastern, composer Elliott Sharp presents the US Premiere in English of his opera Die Grösste Fuge ("The Greatest Fugue") at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. This opera features the virtuosic bass/baritone Nicholas Isherwood as Ludwig van Beethoven with DGF String Quartet, prerecorded electroacoustic backing tracks, and projection design by Janene Higgins.
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm Eastern on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing on YouTube.
About Elliott Sharp, electronics
Elliott Sharp is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and author who leads the projects Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane. His compositional strategies have encompassed the use of fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithms, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art. In 2015, Sharp was awarded both the Berlin Prize and the Jahrespreis from der Deutscher Schallplatten Kritiks. In 2014 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship from the Center for Transformative Media. He has been featured in the Darmstadt and Huddersfield festivals, New Music Stockholm, Au Printemps-Paris, Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale, and the Venice Biennale. His book IrRational Music, a mix of memoir, cultural discussion, and music theory was published in 2019. He is the subject of the documentary Doing The Don't and has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Sharp's composition Storm of the Eye, composed for violinist Hilary Hahn, appeared on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces. His opera Die Grösste Fuge premiered in Bonn as part of Beethoven@250 and his opera Filiseti Mekidesi premiered at the RuhrTriennale in 2018. His Walter Benjamin opera Port Bou premiered in NYC in 2014 at Issue Project Room and in Europe at Berlin Konzerthaus in 2015. Sound installations include Foliage, Fluvial, Chromatine, and Tag. Sharp's collaborators have included Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; pianist Cecil Taylor; Ensemble Modern; pop singer Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; Arditti, JACK, and Kronos quartets; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette and Sonny Sharrock; media artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.
http://www.elliottsharp.com/