Michael Rebhahn: Mr. Sharp, in an interview I recently came across you compare an orchestra with a "fantastic synthesizer with an ancient and arcane operating system". Could you explain this comparison?

Elliott Sharp: Of course the sounds that you can produce from an orchestra, especially with the extended techniques that were developed over the course of the twentieth century, make it an unlimited ballot of sounds. But in these days, especially with limited rehearsal budgets and a general conservativism in the nature of orchestras and the players and how are they approach things, one has to make sure that your score is in a form of I would say the nineteen-century-writing: Every little black dot has to be very precisely placed. You can't ask the orchestra members to make decisions. Still you have a limited amount of time, you want to create a sound and you have to find the most efficient way. And even though the best way to transmit the information for what you want the players to do might be a form of graphic notation, some symbol system that is very personal to you, that defines very well the instructions you want to do if you really want it to happen in the least amount of time with the least discussion you have to use a fairly traditional notation system.

MR: As a musician who frequently utilizes high-tech-electronics in his work, don't you regard orchestral music as rather oboslete?

ES: No, no because the acoustics of an orchestra can never be produced by a digital equipment. Of course you can make different things with digital equipment and I love those sounds as well but the complex stacking of overtones you get and the unpredictability of the overtones ñ and this is one of the most important things of the inner action of orchestral instruments is what it makes very vital for me.

MR: You are well-known as an improviser but besides you are also a creator of composed music. How does your experience as an improviser affect your compositional work?

ES: Well, they feed each other. You know, a good improvisations feels as if it's composed. I call that inevitability. When you are improvising and you are really "in the groove" with it you don't think about what you are doing you just do it. I mean, it's very close to action without any thought preconception. I won't say that is necessarily pure emotion or pure expression maybe it's not but it's some sort of tapping into the great flocks that surround us. And to me a great composition also has that feeling and maybe worked out but it's like you don't want to see all the wires and little things that prop up the structure, you want to just feel the music as if it's pouring out of some source. Also, I think, it would has been as if the music is a natural phenomenon that you have just come across. And this work in improvisation feeds this notion how to create a score, that will feel in the same way.

MR: You gave your work the title 'Calling'; in the commentary printed in our program booklet you refer to the many different meanings this term can have. Can one assume that you don't want to decide on one single meaning?

ES: Exactly. It's a transmission, that is packed. It's coded, you know, there is lots of information that is put in to the piece of music. I mean I have written pieces of music that are programmatic, they may have a theatrical content or a narrative. But this isn't ñ it's really music. It represents a very great shifting, states of internal consciousness over the time in which it was composed. I first began to compose it during a residency in Umbria; I was living in this absolutely idyllic place in the mountains of Umbria just trying to write what I was hearing inside. Of course what I was hearing outside were birds, the sound of trees, looking out of my window seeing mountains and fields of sunflowers it was very idyllic. And that was the seeds of the idea. Then of course I returned to New York and doing my various work things and the bulk of the piece was written after September 11th. I won't say it's a commentary it's not in any way but of course my views of the world had become altered by the events of September 11th in New York.

MR: You wrote most of the piece in the direct neighborhood of World Trade Center. How were you able to go on with your work after these incidents?

ES: Im some way it was a relief to compose to just stare at the screen and move little black dots around. You know, it took me away from thinking about what was happening and how the government of the United States and its manipulations and its machinations with the other forces of evil in the world they are conspired to, create misery for most humans.

MR: If you should illustrate 'Calling' by almost avoiding musical terms; how would your description be?

ES: Psycho-acoustic I think. I would say it is as if I was mapping the internal processes of myself composing to sound; I was trying to manifest these things. I never really thought in musical terms. All the rhythms are very much part of my way of being; and these overtone-structures that come from mapping rhythms to the inner actions on instruments.

MR: Do you think writing orchestral music is also a perspective for the future, for future composing?

ES: Absolutely. I think the orchestra remains important. One would like to see orchestras being more accessible. I mean of course there are massive structures that are very expensive to operate, but I do think the sound and the spectacle of an orchestra can't be matched by anything else. I very much like the theatrical ritual of performance and a lot of my ideas these days are moving more towards theatrical music. I see orchestras whether small ones or large ones as a part of that.

MR: You are in Darmstadt for the first time. Do the Summer Courses have a special importance for you?

ES: I think it's kind of interesting also to have this piece premiered at Darmstadt, because when I was a student Darmstadt was spoken of by the composers that I was studying with and in the music-world in Buffalo by Morton Feldman and Lejaren Hiller in the same way that a devout muslim speaks of making the hadj to Mekka. So here I am making my hadj and I am curious as the results.