 |
| Photo by Peter Gannushkin |
Some news simply comes out of nowhere, it catches us unprepared and on the wrong foot. The news of Susan Alcorn’s sudden death is such news. Nobody expected it; she had recently played concerts in Europe- in front of euphoric audiences. There was no one like her who managed to combine country and western elements with free improvisation so elegantly. Anyone who spoke to her found an incredibly friendly person who could talk about her instrument with a unique enthusiasm. The musical (and human) loss is just immense.
Susan Alcorn was born in Cleveland/Ohio in 1953. She grew up in a musical family and said that her earliest musical experience was a situation in which she sat under the piano as a small child while her mother played - and she played the pedal, her first musical instrument, as she put it. As a child, she was surrounded by the music her parents listened to - Igor Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Bach, Beethoven, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, but also pop music from the radio. She herself began playing the guitar at the age of twelve, inspired by her interest in folk, blues and the pop music of the sixties. She loved Muddy Waters which was why she wanted to play the slide guitar. One evening, when she was about 16 years old, she heard excerpts of John Coltrane’s OM on the radio. The next day she went out and bought His Greatest Years.
In 1975, she saw someone playing pedal steel guitar in a nightclub. She was immediately drawn to the magical, metallic sound and marveled at how the shiny bottleneck seemed to float above the instrument. As with the Coltrane record, she went out and bought the instrument the very next day. It was the start of a lifelong journey of musical discovery and a love affair, which - however - didn’t start easily. First, Alcorn took the obvious way and played in country & western bands. Technically, of course, she had to learn the instrument, but the critique was often direct and brutal. Her first “compliment“ as a pedal steel player came from a musician who came up to her and said he liked the songs she played, but not the way she played. Other musicians also had no sympathy and grimaced when she played. However, she later said that she was grateful for this criticism. It was the only way she was able to acquire the armor she later needed to push the boundaries of her instrument with free jazz influences, classical avant-garde music, Indian ragas and various styles of worldwide roots music.
To improve her technique, she copied the music of her steel guitar and blues heroes: Buddy Emmons, Lloyd Green, Jimmy Day, Curly Chalker, Maurice Anderson, Robert Johnson, Bukka White and many more. She also took lessons from anyone who would teach her, especially Maurice Anderson, who was very supportive. In 1981, she moved to Houston/ Texas, where she played with local and regional country and western swing groups. Alcorn described her time there as her real musical education. In addition to regular country swing jams, she weekly drove to the Third Ward to study jazz improvisation with Dr. Conrad Johnson, whose pentatonic approach to improvisation opened the door to improvised music and the vast possibilities of dissonances.
Alcorn then met the composer and philosopher Pauline Oliveros in 1990 and ended up working with her. Possibly, this was the decisive turning point in her musical life. Oliveros introduced her to her deep listening approach to music (and life). A second turning point was a moment in 1997 when she was asked by trombonist David Dove to play a 12-minute solo set live. Alcorn decided to do this without any guidelines, nothing was planned, it was free improvisation par excellence. She had never played a solo set before and was quite afraid of it. But when the moment came, she looked the audience in the eye and began to play. She described this experience as absolutely liberating - it was just her, the pedal steel, the audience and the room.
Since that moment, Susan Alcorn has played with everyone who is anyone in the free improv scene, e.g. Joe McPhee, Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark, Ellery Eskelin, Mary Halvorson and many more. She particularly emphasized her work with Eugene Chadbourne (with whom she was able to perfectly combine country and free improvisation) and her work with Peter Kowald. She knew no boundaries, as her work with Olivier Messiaen, Astor Piazzolla and Roberta Flack proves. She recently played Messiaen compositions to a sold-out audience in Zurich in Switzerland.
Susan Alcorn recorded lots of exceptional albums. Possibly our favorite is Pedernal (Relative Pitch, 2020) with her quintet with Michael Formanek on bass, Ryan Sawyer on drums, Mary Halvorson on guitar and Mark Feldman on violin. Another beauty is Mirage (Clean Feed, 2013), a trio with Ellery Eskelin on tenor sax and Michael Formanek on bass. Her solo album Soledad (Relative Pitch, 2015), on which she plays compositions by Astor Piazzolla, is outstandingly beautiful. Also very much recommended are her trio Birds Meets Wire (Relative Pitch, 2021) with cellist Leila Bordreuil and sax player Ingrid Laubrock, as well as Filament (Relative Pitch, 2024), a duo with tenor saxophonist Catherine Sikora. A personal favorite of mine is Columbia Icefield (Northern Spy, 2019), a record by Nate Wooley (trumpet, effects), with her, Mary Halvorson (electric guitar), and Ryan Sawyer (drums, voice).
Susan Alcorn still had many plans. She was in the process of recording a trio album with Lori Freedman and Mat Maneri, scheduled for release this year. In July, Relative Pitch wanted to record a sequel to the trio with her, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bordreuil and she also worked on a Messiaen project. In addition, she was scheduled to play at Big Ears Festival with Mary Halvorson and Ryan Sawyer, among others. Finally, a tour with Catherine Sikora was planned for April. All of this is no longer possible. The news of her death shocked us all and many have lost a true friend. The music world has lost a queen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment