Frances-Marie Uitti + Elliott Sharp : "Improvisations"

(JDK, 1997)

First Sharp's musical movement : like a blacksmith he strikes and creates a sound module, uneven, and brutal which he then catapults in an accelerated net of transformations and evil modifications. Looking for the perpetual movement. The initial formula gives birth to another, each formula goes forth, recycles the magical fuel, the energy of the next formula, like one would tune the energy of a star in the far distance. Music full of radiations. Whether he plays very expansive or reserved he builds on ramifications, tentacular variations which go very fast. And this is very masculine in its attempt to explain-express a total and original conception of his proper musical movement.
Frances-Marie Uitti is not very often playing with Sharp. She is rather uncessantly cutting his trajectories. She plays between sharpian ramifications. The dynamic comes from always trying not to be swallowed by the net. As if she was taking on the task to fill, inhabit the spaces he only goes accross and leaves behind. Her strings find the time and space to sing where Sharp dazzles with his ephemerous formulae. Even if sometimes she has to become a fury, play with a consuming physical commitment, in order to preserve her autonomy. She seems also more receptive to what the other is doing, sensibly developing themes he drew only the cabalistic sketches of. So doing she brings out emotional paths barely touched upon by the sharpian conquest for the perpetual movement. She takes all the risks for these emotional conflicts. There their routes are imbricated. Moreover, in the improvised engagements of Uitti can be heard an in-depth work on the relationships between the works written for her by the classical composers and the research for a personal language that no score will ever capture. A space of freedom, breathing, research necessary for her to keep personality in the interpretation when she goes back to the universe of the classical.

Pierre Hemptinne (Médiathèque de Mons, Belgique)

Combining the occasional extreme brutality of Elliot Sharp's non traditional double-necked guitar with the equally non-traditional, double bowed cello playing of Frances Marie-Uitti surely creates an explosive device waiting to detonate. Never quite playing together, they instead each take turns interjecting fragments and filling spaces with improvised textures. Uitti's cello at times seems to take the role of the sweet submissive vocalist as Sharp's guitar strong-arms other parts of the pieces. The dynamic between the two players allows for Uitti to elaborate on the roughly-hewn sketches that Sharp tosses into the work.

(from Listen.com)

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