BmoreArt

Her sense of clarity left a lasting impression on many of her collaborators, like painter and performer Liz Downing. They were first paired together to work on a live improvisation piece for a Chet Pancake film. Although Downing is a part of a handful of musical projects like Molesuit Choir, Curving Tooth, and Underworld Orchard, she sees herself more as a “sound maker” than a musician. She felt a little worried about not having the same technical skills as Alcorn, let alone high quality equipment. “I was working with a $40 bow, and I was embarrassed about it because she’s such a pro,” Downing recalled. “I was pointing out my pitiful little balsa bow, and Susan said, ‘it’s not about what you have, it’s about how you use it.’ So I felt really free at that point in working with her.”

Alcorn and Downing’s mutual affinity continued to expand when Alcorn moved into Downing’s neighborhood. Downing found comfort in their close proximity. “You get this lonely feeling when you’re working by yourself. I’d be working on little details on a painting, and I’d always know that Susan was a couple streets over also, working on these tiny little notes. That grand feeling of camaraderie was always there with Susan.”

The two of them also found solace in each other during the pandemic when live performances were put on pause. Alcorn was recovering from a surgery and was unable to play her pedal steel, so she’d come over to Downing’s porch with a fiddle or viola. “It wasn’t her first instrument,” Downing said. ” “She’d be open to my squeaks and squawks, and she’d play in a comical way. Neither of us took it very seriously but it seemed like the ultimate need for survival.” When I asked Downing about why that felt so essential, she said, “I think it’s the act of connection you get when you are free with someone, not paying attention to who’s making what sound, but that you’re making sounds together.”

This is exactly what brought Alcorn to Baltimore to begin with. In 2008, she was a guest artist for High Zero, Baltimore’s signature experimental improvised music festival. Hosted by the Red Room Collective, Alcorn was visiting from Houston, Texas and was impressed by the scene around the festival. She eventually moved to Baltimore and worked as a teacher with BCPS while connecting and collaborating with the creative community. Tom Boram, a co-founder of High Zero, reflected on Alcorn’s impact on this niche subculture. “Music never left her brain,” Boram said. He had just seen Alcorn perform a week before she passed away, and felt like it was one of her best sets. Boram especially enjoyed how Alcorn would talk to the audience and share stories during her shows. “She’s so eclectic,” Boram expressed. “She’s a library of facts and trivia. The way she thinks about music and politics is all one thing, she has a holistic outlook where it’s all the same; improvisation, composition, they all get melded.” Boram paused, then added.  “I’ll miss that wisdom.”

As a teacher by day and a seasoned performer by night, Alcorn imparted her wisdom on and off stage. “There was Susan the musician and Susan the mentor. She tried to expand the music world and mentored a lot of younger people, especially women,” her husband David Lobato shared. “She brought out huge amounts of accomplishments and beautiful things from other people just by encouraging them. She basically changed the world with that dual approach.” In the wake of Alcorn’s passing, Lobato is working with a small group of people to figure out a way to continue Susan’s musical legacy. They are beginning the process of sorting through her manuscripts, compositions, and a library of notes. “Her work has the potential to last a very long time. It might even help people understand what she did and why she did it.”

Lobato emphasized that Alcorn’s inquisitive spirit was the driving force behind her creativity. “She has numerous sources of inspiration, geographical locations and cultures,” Lobato said. He shared anecdotes from their travels, like when they crossed paths with a bandoneon player in Buenos Aires. Alcorn was a huge fan of Astor Piazolla, a renowned Argentine bandoneon player, and sometimes played his composition “Nueva Canción” during her shows. “She adored the bandoneon instrument, and to have an experienced player on the street, those are the little things that add up and inspire her music.” Then there was the time in Paris when they came across a flier for a show while on an afternoon walk. They translated the text and realized the show was that evening at a church nearby. “We showed up and witnessed this beautiful concert. We loved sitting there and absorbing it.”

Alcorn seemed to always have a strong appetite for music. She talked about the artists that she grew up listening to in a podcast interview with The Tone Arm. What’s really impressive is the effort it took to pursue some of the musicians that piqued her curiosity. While living in Maitland, Florida, she heard a John Coltrane album on her transistor radio and was determined to get her own copy. “I couldn’t drive yet, so I had to get in a little canoe and paddle across a lake to a dock where there was a record store nearby, order it, and get it a month later,” Alcorn shared on the podcast. She repeated this process when she got turned on to the French-American composer Edgar Varèse, oddly enough through Baltimorean Frank Zappa. The liner notes of one of his albums included an adaptation of a Varèse quote: “The present day composer refuses to die.”

Perhaps that quote resonated with Alcorn because she understood the exchange between the musician and listener, the performer and the audience. During a 2024 interview with Boram for his podcast Time Like the Present, Alcorn expressed that “music has to communicate something. We’re engaged in a very social act.” That outlook had a rippling effect, and anyone who saw Alcorn perform felt her intentions. “She was always gracious to the audience,” Lobato reflected. “She would capture a small crowd, they would be utterly silent, just enthralled by her music.”

“To her that was the pinnacle of playing music, even if you have 6 people or 6,000 people, she’s going to give them the same effort,” Lobato added. “She wanted us to participate and be with her.” 

On April 5th, High Zero Foundation is hosting a memorial concert for Susan Alcorn at 2640 Space, located at 2640 Saint Paul Street. Learn more about the memorial here.

From the organizers: 
If you would like to provide a musical offering or participate in anyway please reach out to Shelly Purdy at [email protected]
While this is an absolutely free event, we will be accepting donations for her husband David to help with funeral/burial and unexpected estate fees due to the suddenness of her passing. If you’d like to help sooner than April 5th please consider contributing to his GoFundMe.