One of the world’s premiere avant-gardist on her instrument, Susan Alcorn has taken the steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country and western swing music. Well-known among steel players for her virtuosity and authenticity in a traditional context, Susan Alcorn first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands. Soon she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of modern classical music (Olivier Messiaen, Pauline Oliveros, and Krzysztof Penderecki), avant-garde jazz (John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman), and world music (Indian rags, South American songs, and gamelan orchestra). As an improvisor and composer, Alcorn has proven to be visionary. Her pieces reveal the complexity of her instrument and her musical experience, while never straying from a very direct, intense, and personal musical expression.

Though she usually performs solo, she has collaborated and recorded with others including Pauline Oliveros, Jandek, Eugene Chadbourne., the late Peter Kowald, Chris Cutler, LaDonna Smith, Joe McPhee, Mike Cooper, Lê Quan Ninh, Caroline Kraabel, and Johanna Varner.

Susan currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. For more information on Susan Alcorn, go to www.susanalcorn.com

"beautiful, glassy and liquid, however far she strays from pulse and conventional harmony." The Guardian

"Susan A is a great player who has mastered and redefined an unlikely instrument. With an exquisite touch she invoked it's history, extended its emotional and ethereal strengths and explored its microtonal possibilities—drawing it out of the contexts that traditionally render it invisible, or generic, and into its own mature discourse—reminding improvisers that 'free' includes the right to be romantic, melodic and four to the bar." - Chris Cutler, The Wire (UK)

"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." - Pete 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

"Her radical deep listening & approach to the steel guitar . . . is a revelation." - Ed Baxter, London Musicians Collective

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Caroline Kraabel:

I grew up in Seattle, USA, and came to London UK as a teenager, just too late to realise my punk dreams. Instead I discovered the saxophone and expressed my love for it via indie bands and street performance. As I became aware of London’s vibrant improvised music scene, I got more involved with the physicality of playing, extended techniques (especially the use of voice with the sax), and eventually with acoustics. This more attentive listening led me to continuing research into electricity and music: reproduction (recording, amplification), synthesis and their implications, some of which is documented on my website: carolinekraabel.free.fr