Susan Alcorn with Damon Smith and Jeb Bishop
Non-Event and the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum present
SUSAN ALCORN (pedal steel guitar)
solo and trio with
DAMON SMITH (bass) and JEB BISHOP (trombone)
Metropolitan Waterworks Museum
2450 Beacon Street, Boston
Doors: 7:30pm, Music: 8pm
Tickets: $20 gen admission | $10 students + Non-Event members
There is limited parking at the museum. Please use the T (Reservoir or Cleveland Circle stops on the Green line), if possible!
About the artists
One of the world’s premiere exponents of her instrument, SUSAN ALCORN has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. 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 as for her solo work, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Chris Cutler, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bourdreuil, Evan Parker, Michael Formanek, Zane Campbell, Damon Smith, and Mary Halvorson among others.
In 2016, she was voted “Best Other Instrument” by the International Critics Poll. In 2017 she received the Baker Artist Award, and in 2018, along with saxophonist Joe McPhee, she was the recipient of the Instant Award in Improvised Music.
The UK Guardian writes, “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.”
DAMON SMITH has established himself as a central figure and stalwart organizer of experimental music, developing a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. During his tenure in Boston, he has collaborated with local musicians ranging from Jeb Bishop, Ra-Kalam Bob Moses, Pandelis Karayorgis, Andria Nicodemou, Forbes Graham, Wendy Eisenberg, and others while bringing in collaborators like Weasel Walter, Henry Kaiser, Vinny Golia, and Jaap Blonk. As Smith prepares to leave Boston for St. Louis later this summer, he has ramped up his activity to a dizzying level.
.JEB BISHOP has performed, toured and recorded with groups including the Vandermark Five, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls, Terminal Four, School Days, Ken Vandermark’s Territory Band, Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra, and his own Jeb Bishop Trio. He also co-led the Lucky 7s project with New Orleans-based trombonist Jeff Albert, and is a member of cooperative quartet The Engines. He currently lives in Boston and is a central figure in the city’s jazz and improvised music scene.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Foundation, as well as a grant from the Boston Cultural Council and the Brookline Commission for the Arts, which are funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. It is also presented with the support of WZBC 90.3 FM.
