Catherine Sikora & Susan Alcorn – Filament (Relative Pitch Records, 2024)

By Don Phipps

On Filament, the pairing of tenor saxophonist Catherine Sikora and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn seemed curious. Their respective sounds are notably distinct. And pedal steel guitar is typically associated with country & western music. Even so, as great improvisers of talent will do, the duo align with one another for a compelling and challenging album.

“Filament ii” and “Filament iii” are the more compelling of the three pieces. There is a synchronous interweaving on these numbers – the moods shift together instead of apart. On “ii,” the music opens with long legato phrases. Then there are extended waves of bluesy melancholy. Alcorn picks while Sikora flows. The piece migrates through slow movements to capriciously topsy turvy jags and mad chatter. “ii” flows directly into “iii;” it begins slowly with an eerie abstraction. Alcorn’s picking blends perfectly here with Sikora’s syncopated reflexes. There is a back and forth on “iii,” as the mood shifts from exuberance to hazy atmospherics and back again. Sikora’s expressionistic playing comes to the fore in the wind down, with her lines that suggest a cloudy moodiness - lonely evenings, solitary thinking, sadness, loss.

However, “Filament i” is slightly uneven. This is not to say that the overall piece is somehow deficient. But in “i,” the two musicians appear to struggle to create combined phrases; instead, they rely more on call and response techniques to inform their streams of musical consciousness. This subtle lack of cohesion is not off-putting, but it does suffer in comparison with “ii” and “iii,” where the duo feels on firmer ground. There is a bit of Tombstone in the opening – like watching tumbleweeds skirt across the desert. Sikora’s compelling and powerful tone is in evidence in the early searching phrases. Alcorn slides about, like a slippery eel on the deck of a wet ship. The piece finds its soul in strong passages; the steel guitar reverberates around Sikora’s sax intensity. Listen to Alcorn’s guitar generate suspense behind Sikora’s lilting outbursts or subtle reflections.

The music of Filament reminds us to be open to new things. The steel pedal guitar in Alcorn’s hands has earned a place in the free jazz orchestra. One can imagine the fun both musicians had in combining the extended sounds that emanate from the guitar pedals with the tenor sax exhortations. And this album proves no matter how unusual the instrumental pairing is, true creative music simply cannot be denied.