Elliott Sharp plays the music of Thelonious Monk

E# has just released a set of solo-acoustic guitar interpretations of Thelonious Monk classics on the Clean Feed label.   This CD turned up on a number of "Best of 2006" lists and has received many strongly positive reviews.

"One of few guitar players devoted to helping free the instrument from respective genre-related gimmicks and listener expectations...Sharp proves that Monk was one of jazz' greatest experimentalists and that his work continues to spur on unique interpretations, and not only by pianists" - All About Jazz

Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!

from Paris Transatlantic:

Though I've been acquainted with Elliott Sharp's proverbial eclecticism for several lustra, the name Thelonious Monk was not one I ever expected to see associated with Downtown's one and only cyberbluesman. Sharp's passion for Monk's music dates back to 1968 when, during a stint as a late night DJ, he discovered Monk's "tart harmonies and percussive attack, his catchy but twisted melodies and his incredible rhythmic motion, always dry and economical", but it's taken 38 years for the New Yorker to display that admiration on record. Armed with a Dell'Arte Grande Bouche acoustic guitar, a few mics, preamp, compressor and ProTools, he recorded three versions each of the five Monk pieces covered here. The resulting homage is a treat, a set of heartfelt, crystal-clear improvisations.

Sharp might be best known as a composer, but he's bad on the guitar. The theme of "Misterioso" is rendered with scholarly devotion, but when E# starts attacking the fretboard with his trademark percussive style, tapping and snapping the strings to elicit mind-boggling cascades of notes, you could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Thelonious Sphere wrote the piece specially for him. "Epistrophy" is another "look-ma-both-hands-on-neck" eruption (no, Van Halen has nothing to do with it), ending with a lyrical yet intense virtual string/tabla duo that brings the whole body of the guitar into play. "Bemsha Swing" is probably the best entry point to the whole album, its theme executed with a cool blend of Montgomery-like octaves and half-strummed, half-plucked lines that could teach a few things to the snotty Berklee nerds lost in their Superlocrian finery. Perhaps the most impressive performance, though, is "Round Midnight", played with enormous sensitivity using a complex mix of harmonics and plucked notes, before the improvised section casts us into the arms of a ghostly Joe Pass/John Fahey hybrid, each note perfectly calibrated to reveal its luminescent particles. A final eBow elegy seals this astonishing version of an otherwise pretty worn-out standard. The grand finale "Well You Needn't" is a clamorous show of technical prowess and right-brain intuition: the evergreen is felled, sawn up and mashed into an infernal pulp of flamenco bottleneck blues

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.