Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Jazz Festival New York Posts 2025 Lineup
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
Alcorn took the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music.
(Photo: David Lobato)Pedal steel guitarist and composer Susan Alcorn died Jan. 31 in Baltimore, Maryland, due to natural causes.
One of the world’s premiere exponents of her instrument, Alcorn took the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. She was born on April 4, 1953, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and began playing music at age 3, when she sat underneath her mother’s spinet piano and pressed the foot pedals. In school she played viola, cornet and guitar; at age 21 she found the pedal steel guitar.
Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz and world musics. Though known for her solo work, she collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne, Chris Cutler, the London Improvisors Orchestra, the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bourdreuil, George Burt, Evan Parker, Caroline Kraabel, Michael Formanek, Catherine Sikora Mingus, Zane Campbell and Mary Halvorson, among others. In 2016 she was voted best Miscellaneous Instrument in the DownBeat International Critics Poll. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Baker Artist Award and in 2018, along with saxophonist Joe McPhee, the Instant Award in Improvised Music.
Alcorn released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums as a leader/co-leader including, most recently, Filament with Catherine Sikora.
“I view the instrument I play, the pedal steel guitar, not as an object to be mastered, but as a partner with which to share with the listener a meaning, depth, and hopefully profound awareness of each fragile moment we’re together,” Alcorn wrote on her website. “It is this dynamic of which I try to be cognizant in both my writing and performance.” DB
The Blue Note Jazz Festival New York kicks off May 27 with a James Moody 100th Birthday Celebration at Sony Hall.
Apr 8, 2025 1:23 PM
Blue Note Entertainment Group has unveiled the lineup for the 14th annual Blue Note Jazz Festival New York, featuring…
“I’m certainly influenced by Geri Allen,” said Iverson, during a live Blindfold Test at the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival.
Apr 15, 2025 11:44 AM
Between last Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Ethan Iverson performed as part of the 31st Umbria Jazz Winter festival in…
“At the end of the day, once you’ve run out of differences, we’re left with similarities,” Collier says. “Cultural differences are mitigated through 12 notes.”
Apr 15, 2025 11:55 AM
DownBeat has a long association with the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference, the premiere…
“It kind of slows down, but it’s still kind of productive in a way, because you have something that you can be inspired by,” Andy Bey said on a 2019 episode of NPR Jazz Night in America, when he was 80. “The music is always inspiring.”
Apr 29, 2025 11:53 AM
Singer Andy Bey, who illuminated the jazz scene for five decades with a four-octave range that encompassed a bellowing…
Davis was a two-time Grammy winner for liner notes.
Apr 22, 2025 11:50 AM
Francis Davis, an august jazz and cultural critic who won both awards and esteem in print, film and radio, died April…
