The Monday Morning Brew #88

Time for a new Brew Playlist to start your week includes music from Marianne Faithfull and Susan Alcorn who recently passed away.

Credit: Fortepan / Barbjerik Ferenc

This week’s Monday Morning Brew includes tracks from singer and actress Marianne Faithfull and American composer, improviser, and pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, who both passed away towards the end of last week. The Guardian described Marianne as one of the UK’s most versatile and characterful singer-songwriters. Nick Cave called her: “A wild woman, bold, brilliant and beautiful. We have lost not just a fiercely unique talent, but the stored knowledge of a generation. Through her extraordinary, defiant and lived-in voice, Marianne brought her own maverick truth to every song she sang, and every story she spoke. We loved her very much.”

Susan Alcorn may be the lesser-known of the two, but she was a true original and well-known experimental pioneer. Drew Daniel & M.C. Schmidt (Matmos) wrote: We are stunned and saddened at the news that Susan Alcorn has passed. A phenomenally gifted improviser, arranger, and musician whose pedal steel playing bridged so many musical worlds from free improv and jazz to radical reworkings of Olivier Messiaen, Astor Piazzola and Pablo Casals. She was a delightful presence- funny, sharp, immediate. Just a week ago, we attended her concert with David Grubbs and The Caribbean in Baltimore and we were so moved by her playing and her politically astute final words about the need for all of us to stand up to the fear and fascism of this new moment we are all in. I cannot believe that she is gone. I am so grateful to you, Susan, for your deep gifts. R.I.P.

From bio: Susan was one of the world’s premiere exponents of her instrument; she 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 music.

Though known for her solo work, she has collaborated with numerous artists, including Pauline Oliveros, Chris Cutler, the London Improvisers Orchestra, the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bourdreuil, George Burtm, Evan Parker, Michael Formanek, Zane Campbell, and Mary Halvorson.

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.”

---

You can also hear new music from Dana Gavanski, The Gentle Good, Chris Brain, Stein Urheim, Sam Amidon, Rosie Miles, David Thomas Broughton, Joshua Burnside, Blue Lake, Rose City Band and more.