Kevin Sun

As in 2021 , the time-honored ritual of making end of year lists. I found an unpublished draft for 2022 and didn't even try in 2023, but I think it's still a worthwhile activity: any amount of reflection on the year before diving into the next is a measure of appreciation for experiences had.  This past year, I tried something new on a whim, which was making a long scroll of paper taped from multiple sheets of normal printer paper, then subdividing it into the 52 weeks of the year and adding some creative experiences for each week. After reviewing that through the past 51 weeks, there are some 293 items—not bad, more than I would have thought, almost one little spark or source of inspiration per day. Films: THE ZONE OF INTEREST (starting the year off powerfully) ARTIE SHAW: TIME IS ALL YOU GOT (ended up arranging "Begin the Beguine" and playing it at Lowlands, also learning Artie's legendary "Stardust" solo on clarinet) AMERICAN FICTION (maybe not one fo...

Quartets  is out today.  Yesterday , I wrote some additional notes on the music of the first half, which features Dana Saul, Walter Stinson, and Matt Honor. Today, I'll jot down some more notes on the second half, which features Christian Li, Walter, and Kayvon Gordon. Logistical Notes We recorded the second half immediately following a three-night, six-set residency at Ohad Talmor's SEEDS in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. I hadn't originally intended to go back to the studio again after recording what became the first side of Quartets  just half a year earlier (in October 2022), but I'm glad I did. Given the scarcity of gigs in New York relative to the sheer number of overqualified musicians, it's very hard to estimate when you'll get in enough live shows with a band to feel that it's become something, but fortunately with this group of extremely experienced and sensitive musicians, that brief but invaluable residency was enough to develop a band chemistry tha...

Quartets  is out tomorrow.  While the press release tells one easily-digestible narrative about the album in the ballpark of about 700 words, my own story about the songs on the album can be more discursive and less tailored for the eyes of jazz writers. Logistical Notes Although this is technically my seventh album (following, in reverse chronological order: The Fate of the Tenor , The Depths of Memory , <3 Bird , (Un)seaworthy , The Sustain of Memory , and Trio ), it's the tenth "disc" or set of music since it's my third double album, the other two being Depths  and Sustain . I don't think I was intentionally waiting to release music specifically for the quartet format, but in my mind, this is the flagship format for jazz saxophonists—thinking of the Coltrane classic quartet, Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter's '60s Blue Note classics,  and so on.  As a matter of practical consideration, I put this music out as a double album simply because I have a lo...

A couple of people have asked me about my song " Kierkegaardashian , " which concludes my upcoming album Quartets , and its relation to the source material, which is Charlie Parker's " Kim ," so here goes: Back during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I spent some time overlaying multiple takes of Charlie Parker's solos on a given tune, adjusting the timing to align them roughly, and then seeing how the phrasing overlapped or diverged for curiosity's sake. I wrote a bit about this in a  blog post I called "Synchronic Bird,"   but I took it a step further with "Kim" by trying to compose a new song using the overlapping material.  First, I laid out transcriptions of each take one above the other, then chose phrases between the two takes that would create a new, super-long linear melody: I did this process for the entire solo, which spans multiple choruses, but "Kierkegaardashian" was intended as a miniature composition, so I only...

The in-universe sequel to "Depths II" is out now: "Heideggerdashian," a music video directed by Emma He.  On a musical note, this track, which opens side B of Quartets , is the complement to the closing track, "Kierkegaardashian." They're actually just alternate takes of the same piece, but with the improvised saxophone sections happening in opposite sections.  I composed "Kierkegaardashian" for  The Jazz Gallery Lockdown Sessions, No. 33 back in February 2021; the song is derived from multiple takes of Charlie Parker's improvisations on "Kim" (hence the title), with liberal use of octave displacement to produce the wide-ranging melody of the new song. Andrew Boudreau graciously learned and recorded the piece, originally intended for solo piano, which ended up being the outro credit music for my segment of the Lockdown Session. Heideggerdashian Director: Emma He Producer: Maddie McCann Editor: Emma He, Maddie McCann DP: Dan...

Wow—my name, up in lights! Seemed like everybody was signing their posters in the green room. Praise the sun. "Luke 18:14 improved.— He who humbles himself wants to be exalted" — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human  (1878) I survived the Kevin Sun Trio Tour 2024! Overall, I'd say it was a success: music was good and got better, no bags were lost, we made it to each show on time and played for relatively well-attended shows, and audiences seemed genuinely receptive and appreciative of our work.  Paraphrasing Nietzsche, in the process of self-exaltation I also found myself deeply humbled. The passing of time and the process of aging is humbling, as I've found in the decade since graduating college, and living in New York and trying to be a professional-level musician is similarly humbling, but now I've discovered yet another source of humility: the road.  Some brief notes and reflections on this past go-around: The Music Walter brought this up after the first ...

  Photo by Noah Philipose (May 2024 at Sear Sound) – graphic by me via the magic of Canva I have not booked a series of dates for my trio outside of NYC since 2019. The last time I traveled with my bandmates, it was to Beijing in May 2019 to play a string of dates and then record the trio and quartet music that would form The Sustain of Memory , which we managed to release that same November.  A major reason for not venturing beyond NYC these past few years is logistics: it's a lot of steps to book dates and coordinate travel and figure out remuneration, and having played weekly at Lowlands from September 2021 through this past July relieved me of the need to find playing opportunities elsewhere when I could just walk a few blocks and dive into music with my friends.  But I think there's still value in trying to get out of my immediate environs to play, which is to play live for people who might connect with what we're exploring musically and to make some sort of a cre...