Susan Alcorn (born 1953) is an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, improvisor, and

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

ist.

Life

Born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Alcorn started playing guitar at the age of twelve and quickly immersed herself in folk music, blues, and the pop music of the 1960s. A chance encounter with blues musician

Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago b ...

steered her towards playing slide guitar. By the time she was twenty-one, she had immersed herself in the pedal steel guitar, playing in country and

western swing Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the Western United States, West and Southern United States, South among the region's Western music (North America), Western string bands. It is dan ...

bands in Texas. Soon, she began to combine the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own

extended technique In music, extended technique is unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional methods of singing or of playing musical instruments employed to obtain unusual sounds or timbres.Burtner, Matthew (2005).Making Noise: Extended Techniques after Expe ...

s to form a personal style influenced by

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...

, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world. By the early 1990s her music began to show an influence of the holistic and feminist “deep listening” philosophies of

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

. Though mostly a solo performer, Alcorn has collaborated with numerous artists including

Eugene Chadbourne Eugene Chadbourne (born January 4, 1954) is an American banjoist, guitarist and music critic. Life and career Chadbourne was born in Mount Vernon, New York, but grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He started playing guitar when he was eleven or twel ...

Peter Kowald Peter Kowald (21 April 1944 – 21 September 2002) was a German free jazz and free improvising double bassist and tubist. Career A member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and a touring double-bass player, Kowald collaborated with many European ...

Chris Cutler Chris Cutler (born 4 January 1947) is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of other bands, including Art Bears, Ne ...

Joe Giardullo Joe Giardullo (born July 24, 1948, in Brooklyn, NY) is a soprano saxophonist and composer who is known for his work with Joe McPhee. While with McPhee, Giardullo has performed at some of the more notable jazz festivals. More recently, Giardullo ha ...

Caroline Kraabel Caroline Kraabel (born 1961 in Torrance, California) is an American saxophonist. Career After living in Seattle, Kraabel moved to London while in her teenage years. She started playing saxophone and became active in London's improvised music sce ...

Ingrid Laubrock Ingrid Laubrock (born 24 September 1970) is a German jazz saxophonist, who primarily plays tenor saxophone but also performs and records on soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones. She studied with Jean Toussaint, Dave Liebman and at the Guildhal ...

, Le Quan Ninh,

Josephine Foster Josephine Foster is an American singer, songwriter, and musician from Colorado. She is known for her anachronistic voice and work that weaves older styles with the modern, escaping simple classification. As a teenager Foster worked as a churc ...

Joe McPhee Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is ...

, Vinny Golia and

Ken Vandermark Ken Vandermark (born September 22, 1964) is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist. A fixture on the Chicago-area music scene since the 1990s, Vandermark has earned wide critical praise for his playing and his multilayered composi ...

LaDonna Smith LaDonna Smith (born 1951) is an American avant garde musician from Alabama. She is a violinist, violist, and pianist. Since 1974 she has been performing free improvisational music with musicians such as Davey Williams, Leland Davis, Michael Evans ...

Mike Cooper Mike Cooper may refer to: * Mike Cooper (musician) (born 1942), English blues and jazz guitarist and singer-songwriter * Mike Cooper (politician) (born 1951), former politician in Ontario, Canada See also * Michael Cooper (disambiguation) * Mike Ho ...

Walter Daniels Walter Daniels (born 1963) is an American musician and harmonica player noted for introducing the instrument into a number of styles of music not usually associated with the harmonica, including punk rock, and avant-garde free improvisation. Hi ...

Ellen Fullman Ellen Fullman (born 1957) is an American composer, instrument builder, and performer. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is known for her 70-foot (21-meter) Long String instrument, tu ...

Jandek Jandek is the musical alias of Houston, Texas based lo-fi folk singer Sterling Smith. Since 1978, Jandek has independently released over 45 albums without granting interviews or providing any biographical information, releasing on a self-made lab ...

, George Burt, Janel Leppin,

Michael Formanek Michael Formanek (born May 7, 1958) is an American jazz bassist born in San Francisco, California, United States, and associated with the jazz scene in New York City, New York. Career In the 1980s, Formanek worked as a sideman with Freddie Hubb ...

Ellery Eskelin Ellery Eskelin (born August 16, 1959) is an American tenor saxophonist raised in Baltimore, Maryland and residing in New York City. His parents, Rodd Keith and Bobbie Lee, were both professional musicians. Rodd Keith died in 1974 in Los Angeles, ...

Fred Frith Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser. Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...

Maggie Nicols Maggie Nicols (or Nichols, as she originally spelled her name as a performer) (born 24 February 1948), is a Scottish free-jazz and improvising vocalist, dancer, and performer. Early life and career Nicols was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, as Mar ...

Evan Parker Evan Shaw Parker (born 5 April 1944) is a British tenor and soprano saxophone player who plays free improvisation. Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free ja ...

, Johanna Varner, Zane Campbell,

Mary Halvorson Mary Halvorson (born October 16, 1980) is an American avant-garde jazz composer and guitarist from Brookline, Massachusetts. Among her many collaborations, she has: led a trio with and Ches Smith, and a quintet with the addition of Jon Irabago ...

and Bill Embleton and the Severn Run Country Band She has written on the subject of music for the UK magazine ''Resonance'' and

CounterPunch ''CounterPunch'' is a left-wing online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly. ''CounterPunch'' is based in the Unit ...

. Her article “The Road the Radio, and the Full Moon” was included in “The Best Music Writing of 2006” published by ''Da Capo Press''. She lived in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

; she lives in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. She is married to photographer David Lobato.

Discography

* "Uma" (Loveletter 2000) * "Curandera" (Uma Sounds 2005), "Concentration" (Recorded 2004), * "And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar" (Olde English Spelling Bee 2007) * "Touch This Moment" (Uma Sounds 2010) * "Soledad" (

Relative Pitch Relative pitch is the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note and identifying the interval between those two notes. For example, if the note ''Do'' and ''Fa'' is played on a piano, a per ...

, 2015) * "Evening Tales" (Mystra 2016). * "Prism Mirror Lens" (with Phillip Greenlief, VG+ 2019) * "Invitation to a Dream (with Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark, Astral Spirits 2019) * "Pedernal" (Relative Pitch 2020) * "Bird Meets Wire" (with Ingrid Laubrock, Leila Bordreuil, Relative Pitch 2020)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alcorn, Susan 1953 births Free improvisation Steel guitarists Pedal steel guitarists American experimental musicians Free improvising musicians Living people Musicians from Houston American women in electronic music Guitarists from Texas 20th-century American women guitarists 20th-century American guitarists 21st-century American women guitarists 21st-century American guitarists Musicians from Baltimore