Susan Alcorn

Susan Alcorn is a composer, improvisor, and pedal steel guitarist active in contemporary music and free improvisation. She combines the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own extended techniques to form a personal style influenced by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world.
Susan has performed at the London Musician’s Collective’s Festival of Experimental Music, the Birmingham Improv Festival, Musique Action Festival, Leipzig JazzTage, Subtonic and CBGB’s in New York, Ateliers Tampon in Paris, and at Il Continiere in Rome.
Though mostly a solo performer, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald, EChris Cutler, Joe Giardullo, Caroline Kraabel, Le Quan Ninh, Sean Meehan, Joe McPhee, LaDonna Smith, Mike Cooper, Misha Feigin, Ellen Fullman, and Johanna Varner.
Susan currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

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"From the relatively unadorned sound of pedal steel and amplifier, Susan Alcorn brings forth music that is as full of emotional honesty as it is of melodic and harmonic exploration and surprise. She possesses a virtuosic technique that is always at the service of the musical moment and its possibilities for expression and communication."
- Kevin McNeil Brown, Dusted Features
"Alcorn’s pedal steel tones, stretch, float, and dance in the air, and on the ears, expressing something that’s worlds beyond words, yet able to communicate on the deepest level."
- Peter Gershon Signal to Noise
“Alcorn is a rare musician who embraces the full spectrum of expressive possibilities for an instrument to communicate a full human experience instead of a restricted aesthetic paradigm. She's a maverick and her solo recordings are destined to become classics that we turn to year after year for relief from common music.”
- Michael Anton Parker, Downtown Music Gallery

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