Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins: Entanglement Suite

Wednesday, November 12, 2025 at 8:00pm
Ring Family Performing Arts Hall

Free and open to the public.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp returns to Wesleyan for the first time in over a decade to present the North American premiere of Entanglement Suite, his collaboration with graphic designer Janene Higgins. 

Entanglement Suite premiered in Naples, Italy in September 2023 by the Ensemble Dissonanzen. The work is a structure for improvisation using video and sound, where the images provide a visual counterpoint to the music. Foreground and background are continuously shifting as both sound and visuals emerge from fixed elements and then expand with improvised extrapolations. The projections may solidify the abstract but may also elevate that which is obvious to another level of meaning, never literal, never explaining, but creating an immediate visceral response.

Sharp will read selections from his new book from Wesleyan University Press, Feedback: Translations from the IrRational (2025), and employ creative digression to touch upon his current compositional strategies and projects, during the Music Department Colloquium on Wednesday, November 12, 2025 at 4:30pm in Ring Family Performing Arts Hall.

As a composer, Sharp's strategies encompass fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithmic approaches, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation to yield work catalyzing a synesthetic approach to music as well as functioning as retinal art. A multi-instrumentalist, Sharp will perform on guitars and electronics. A graphic designer by profession, Janene Higgins uses original footage, hand-painted textures, and digital processing in her projection design which she may then manipulate live, using various software operations.

Sharp and Higgins have created a number of operas with the visuals providing set and setting as well as commentary. The operas include Binibon (2009), Port Bou (2014) which received its New England premiere at Wesleyan in 2016, Filiseti Mekidesi (2018), and Die Grösste Fuge (2021). 

Janene Higgins is a video artist and graphic designer based in New York City. Her work spans several genres, from video performance in the experimental music scene to commercial videos, to the design of CD packages for such record labels as Sony, BMG, PolyGram, and a wide variety of independents. Her collaborators include Ikue Mori, Mari Kimura, Alan Licht, Nurit Tilles, Okkyung Lee, Aki Onda, and Zeena Parkins. In addition to video performance, she has directed several short experimental videos, often with sound design by notable avant-garde artists including Elliott Sharp, Parkins, Christian Marclay, and John Duncan. Her work has been performed and exhibited at The New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center; Documenta in Kassel, Germany; The Kitchen, New York City; Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon; City of Women festival, Slovenia; The Chelsea Art Museum, New Yorkk City; HiTeca Festival in Porto, Portugal; Art Institute of Chicago; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires; The Hamburg Short Film Festival; and at The Impakt Festival in The Netherlands.

Elliott Sharp is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist 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 Filiseti Mekidesi premiered at the RuhrTriennale in 2018 and his Walter Benjamin opera Port Bou premiered in New York City in 2014 at Issue Project Room and in Europe at Berlin Konzerthaus in 2015. His 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.