A
native of Santa Barbara, California, Susan Allen is well known throughout the
Americas, Australia, Europe, Russia and Asia for her world premiere
performances of new and improvised music for harp on television, radio and at
major music festivals.
As a
harpist, her appearances have included concerts on the NBC Today Show, National
Public Radio (with the Vermeer String Quartet), Gaudeamus International Music
Week in Rotterdam, the Festival de Caracas, the London (Ontario) Regional Art
Gallery, New York Philharmonic's "Horizons" concerts, the Ferienkurse
für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany, at the Kitchen Center in New York,
Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, the Smithsonian
Institute, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Los Angeles
Festival, the nationwide Festival of Korea, Monday Evening Concerts, with the
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Speculum Musicae, SONOR from the
University of California at San Diego, and in Boston with Composers in Red
Sneakers, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Cambridge Chamber Players, and
Musica Viva. Long-term collaborations with composers James Tenney, Earl Kim,
Mel Powell, Harold Budd, Ruth Lomon, Morton Feldman, William Thomas McKinley
and many others have yielded her premieres and recordings of major 20th and
21st century repertoire for harp. Of her solo concert debut featuring many new
works, the New York Times wrote, “sheer physical virtuosity…sensitive, expertly
played.”
Susan's
work in improvised music has taken her to the Verona Italy Jazz Festival and
the Stockholm Jazz and Blues All Star Festival, in many instances in collaboration
with jazz great, Yusef Lateef. Her musical creations have been called “daring
improvisations…fascinating” by Jazz Journal International (UK). She has
performed at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles with a grant from Meet the
Composer/Rockefeller Foundation/AT&T Program in collaboration with the
National Endowment for the Arts. Allen has improvised alongside
saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, sitarist Amiya Dasgupta and
trumpeter/composer Ismael Wadada Leo Smith. She has also performed with drummer
Albert "Tootie" Heath (Modern Jazz Quartet), violinist L. Shankar
(WOMAD Artist), jazz great Dave Brubeck, guitarist Kevin Eubanks (NBC Tonight
Show bandleader), H’arpeggione virtuoso Erik Hinds, along with Russian greats
Sergey Letov, Arkady Freeman, Roman Stolyar and Sergey Belichenko. Her
recitals of works by women composers have been presented at the First and
Second International Congresses on Women in Music (at New York University and
the University of Southern California), Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston, S.C.,
the Women's Music Festival at Boston University, Op. 2 at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor, and in 1988 at the Fifth International Congress on Women
in Music in Heidelberg, Germany.
David
Cotner of the Los Angeles Weekly wrote, "CalArts dean and persistent
purveyor of the nude piano that is the harp, Susie Allen has spread the gospel
of new music across the world, from The Today Show to National Public Radio,
Carnegie Hall and Gaudeamus Contemporary Music Week in the Netherlands. She's
lectured internationally on music in general and has recorded for Brian Eno's
Opal label. A snappy studio savant as well as an intuitive improviser and an
initiate on the kayagum (a Korean zither), she moves birdsong moments through
trilling vibrations - inverse, obverse and beautiful."
During
ten years’ residence in Boston, Massachusetts from 1973 to 1983, Susan was a
founder of many non-profit musical organizations in that area: the Pro
Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Cambridge Chamber Players, Composers in
Red Sneakers and Performing Artist Associates of New England, all of which
continue to enhance the cultural life of Bostonians to this day.
Active
in the performance of music for harp and electronics, having presented one of
the first recitals devoted exclusively to the medium in 1984, Susan has
appeared under the auspices of the Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the
U.S. at New York University, at M.I.T. in Boston, at Stanford University, at
the SCREAM Festival in Los Angeles, and at Paseo Nuevo in Santa Barbara,
CA. El Nacíonal in Caracas, Venezuela wrote, “Susan Allen is a sort of
paradigm for the female world and a first-rate harpist: expressive and with a
magnificent ability.”
She
has premiered numerous electro-acoustic works, including "Fantasy"
for harp & live electronics by Canadian composer David Myska (commissioned
by the Canada Council). In 1998, she took the first electric harp to India for
improvised concerts with L. Subramaniam, Larry Coryell and Miya Masaoka,
soloists with Susan Allen, backed by a group of Indian drummers, both North and
South.
Susan
has recorded for Warner Brothers/Opal, Nonesuch, Vox, New Albion, Nine Winds,
1750 Arch, Meta, Black Saint/Soul Note, Galaxia, Flying Fish, Milan, ERMATELL
(Siberia) and Cold Blue. She holds a BFA from the California Institute of
the Arts, where she is a member of the performance Faculty, and an MA and Ph.D.
in Sociology from Schools on Borders. Susan also plays the Korean kayagum,
which she studied with virtuoso Ok Ja Paik. She has been published in the
journal Parabola, and has written numerous papers on free improvisation which
have been presented at the International Bertholdt Brecht Symposium, the
International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place, and
the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies.
In 2005 she traveled with the organization 'Ephemera' on their first conference
on the trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing, China. After her solo recital of new works in Darmstadt, Germany at the International Summer Course for New Music, the Darmstädter Echo called her "a sovereign interpreter".
In
2004, she received a residency at the Sitka Center for
Art and Ecology in Otis, Oregon, to write her book about free
improvisation, "Arcade of Desire."
Susan
holds an annual summer course both
internationally and in Pacific Palisades, California, for harpists of all ages
and levels.