EmPyre by Elliott Sharp Operas

Em/Pyre is an opera commissioned by soprano Donella Dell' Monaco for the 2006 Venice Biennale to be performed by her and her regular ensemble. She also requested that I perform with the group and conduct the piece. I called upon longtime friend and collaborator Steve Piccolo to create the libretto and to sing the baritone parts.

The strategy was to create a composition to be developed in a week of workshops leading up to the premiere. It was based on my interpretation and comparison of Venice in the 15th century with New York City in the late 20th century - two towering city-states whose empires devolved due to both internal and external cultural and political/economic factors. The composed core materials and defined structure were realized through my conduction and the manifestation of simple algorithmic approaches as well as guided improvisations based on the core composed materials.

Elliott Sharp: composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, author, leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane with compositional strategies including fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors. His collaborators have included Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Cecil Taylor; Debbie Harry; Hubert Sumlin; Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt