Interview on WKCR's Live Constructions (February 23, 2025)

Special thanks to Hannah Puelle for inviting me to participate in WKCR's Sunday night show "Live Constructions," as well as to Satchel Peterson for referring me. With the power of AI-powered transcription and formatting, I spent under 5 minutes of human time to obtain this transcript. The original recording of this show can be heard in its entirety here via WKCR's SoundCloud account.

WKCR-FM · Live Constructions w/ Kevin Sun - 2.23.25

Hannah Puelle: You're listening to WKCR FM New York and WKCR HD. That's 89.9 on your FM dial or online at wkcr.org. It is ten o'clock p.m. on February 23rd, 2025, and you just heard "Black Betty" by Clifford Jordan off of the 1965 album These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Lead Belly. Right now, you're tuned into Live Constructions, a show where we bring you a live in-studio interview and performance every Sunday evening between 10-11 p.m. Right now, we're joined by Kevin Sun and his quartet, so we're excited to hear from them. But first we're just going to have a quick interview with Kevin Sun. So just to start us off, can you introduce yourself to our listeners?

Kevin Sun: Sure. Good evening. My name is Kevin Sun. I'm a saxophonist and composer based in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm very excited to be at WKCR.

HP: Cool. Can you tell us about how you first started playing music? Was it first playing saxophone? Do you play any other instruments? What has your musical journey been like?

KS: I didn't play saxophone first. I started on piano. My parents made me do it and I didn't like it all that much. I started when I was eight. I started saxophone in fourth grade, just for the public elementary school band program. But I got really onto jazz sort of in middle school. I heard some music that really kind of changed my life and made me want to play professionally. And so that's when I got started.

HP: Very cool. Can you talk about what some of that music was at the time and also what kinds of music you draw inspiration from now?

KS: Sure. So specifically it was Stan Getz playing on "The Girl from Ipanema." I just never heard the saxophone sound like that. When I heard the recording, I didn't actually know what instrument it was. It didn't sound at all like the saxophone that I knew from band class. So, and then from then on, you know, I discovered Charlie Parker and Lester Young and all the other greats. And, yeah, I've sort of just been trying to follow in their footsteps ever since.

HP: Very cool. This is a question that I like to ask people when they come on because I think it—I don't know, I've gotten a lot of different answers. I've gotten answers like architecture and furniture and movies and books. But are there any non-musical pieces of art or just forms of expression that you find meaning in or that influence your work at all?

KS: Absolutely. I think one medium that comes to mind when I have the band, especially for this band, is video games or interactive media—interactive entertainment, whatever you want to call it. I think just world design, level design, gameplay, all these things—it really translates well for jazz because it's an interactive medium in terms of the musicians playing with each other and kind of co-navigating through compositional spaces and improvisational spaces. And I kind of came back to playing video games after a long time off. So basically, before I played music seriously, I really liked video games, and then I basically forswore it for two decades. Then the pandemic happened. I got back into playing video games through other friends who were musicians who were adults. And there's been that kind of nice feedback loop ever since.

HP: That's a really cool answer. I like that a lot. Can you tell us a little bit about your composition process and what it's like to prepare for a live show like this and how those things differ? Is there any part of your set that is sort of improvised or is it all composed?

KS: Yeah, the composition process for me usually just starts with an idea, some sort of a concept. It could be something that I'm exploring formally in music or something that's hard for me to do, that I want to just dig into further. So usually writing a song to challenge myself, or to explore an idea further. That's kind of the beginning. Or it could be more abstract—could just be a turn of phrase or, you know, something visual or something outside of the realm of music that I want to translate into music.

And, you know, in terms of the set that we're going to play, a lot of this is music that was written in the past year or so, so more recent. And some of this actually is more directly connected to the video game stuff that I alluded to earlier, almost to kind of a—I don't want to say absurd extent, but very literal. So, for instance, some of the songs we're going to play, they are rough transcriptions of dialogue from NPCs from a video game called Dark Souls, and set to music. And so obviously we're an instrumental group. So I took the lyrical part out of it, but it kind of just creates a very different setting for improvising from what I would write if I didn't have something really concrete to work with.

HP: Interesting. Well, Kevin did us a great favor and I think a lot of our jazz listeners are going to come to appreciate this favor, but he brought in a bunch of records and CDs to add to our library. We were just talking about them before the interview and he mentioned that he has a record label. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how that came about and sort of what the story is there?

KS: Absolutely. Yeah, so the name of the label is Endectomorph Music. That's a made-up word, "endectomorph." One of my friends from music school, I believe, Isaac Wilson came up with it when he was really interested in this kind of far-fetched, you know, discredited theory of body types—endomorph, ectomorph and all that. But I always just kind of—the term stuck in my head.

So I started this label shortly after finishing music school about 10 years ago, mostly to document my own work and also some music of my peers, and it's kind of grown a bit in the past few years. We've been able to partner with La Reserve, which is a great record label in their own right, but also they specialize in digital distribution, so they've been helping us get the music out there. And yeah, there's been quite a catalogue in the past year and a half, two years, and I think we have at least six or seven albums slated for release this year. And yeah, that's just a bit about Endectomorph Music. And it's on the web. There's a website, just endectomorph.com.

HP: Very cool. Yeah, I'm looking through some of these records. It seems like a lot of them you produced or you play on them. Can you talk about that, and you also mentioned you went to music school. So maybe can you tell us a little bit about that and sort of your progression as a producer and that sort of thing?

KS: Sure. I mean, you know, production for most jazz albums is pretty limited in the sense that it's acoustic performance for the most part. There's not that much post-production, so it could be something as simple as just being in the room, being in the control room when the band is recording and just giving some feedback and offering general advice or just opinions, you know, about the direction of the music.

So it can be valuable as a counterpoint to what the musicians themselves are thinking in the moment, and also just another set of ears, essentially to help with the recording process so that the person who's leading the band, they don't have the full burden of not only performing, but also assessing their performance in real time. They can have somebody else like me assist with that.

HP: And I'm seeing on the back of a lot of these CD cases a bunch of recording studios in New York where all these albums were recorded. Where are some places that you've recorded your music and what has your experience been like with that?

KS: Oh yeah, there's so many fantastic studios. I mean, I can just shout out a few here: Samurai Hotel in Astoria; Big Orange Sheep in Brooklyn, which is no longer around, unfortunately—it closed recently; Oktaven in Mount Vernon, which is a fabulous studio. Bunker Studio in Greenpoint/Williamsburg. Really fantastic. And I have to shout out a friend of mine from music school, Andres Abenante, has his own studio where I've been recording more recently called Jaybird, and that's near Industry City, basically in Sunset Park in South Brooklyn. It's a great studio.

HP: Cool. Right near where I grew up, I grew up in Sunset Park.

KS: Yeah, yeah.

HP: You mentioned you're based in Brooklyn. Where in Brooklyn are you?

KS: I live in South Park Slope right on the border of Gowanus.

HP: Nice. Are there any other sort of—I mean, obviously the people that you've produced for or recorded with—but who are some of your musical contemporaries, the people in your sort of musical scene if you want to give anyone a shout out?

KS: Oh, so many. I mean, I'll shout out the band first: Anthony Pearlman on piano, Jayla Chee on bass, Eliza Salem on drums. Fortunate to work with a lot of just really inspiring musicians. Adam O'Farrill, an amazing trumpet player and composer, Dana Saul, who's a great pianist and composer—I mean, it's endless. Those were just the first two random names that popped into my head. 

[ed note: I panicked in the moment and forgot to shout out so many people, but just to rectify a bit here: Jacob Shulman, Ben Solomon, Neta Raanan, Sam Weinberg, Christian Li, Andrew Boudreau, Evan Main, Hayoung Lyou, Max Light, Juanma Trujillo, Aaron Quinn, Walter Stinson, Simón Willson, Kayvon Gordon, Matt Honor, Steven Crammer, so many more]

HP: Do you want to talk a little bit about your quartet today and how you all came together, how you started playing together? Or how each of you sort of met?

KS: Yeah, so this band is kind of more recent. I've had a number of bands in the past few years, quartets and trios, and I kind of wanted to try something different compositionally, and I thought this group of musicians would be a good match for that and kind of down for the challenge.

I have to think about how I met them... I know that I must have played with Eliza through somebody else first and, you know, Eliza's extremely busy since she hit the scene in New York, and so I just really enjoyed playing with her and, you know, we played some gigs at this bar near where I live called Lowlands. So that was kind of a good chance to get to know her more musically.

Eliza recommended Jay and, Anthony, I first played a session with him, I think, through the drummer Steven Crammer, who's another peer of ours. Really liked his playing and Anthony did this amazing show at this club, a relatively new jazz club on the Lower East Side called Close Up, which I saw last year and it kind of blew me away and then I thought, I really want to start a band and have Anthony be in it.

HP: Amazing. Can you talk about some of the places around the city that you've played? You're mentioning going to see other people's shows—where are some of the places you've played and what have been some of your favorites?

KS: Sure. So Lowlands Bar is probably the place I played the most. I played there basically every Tuesday for three years and now I play there monthly, so, you know, well over a hundred gigs, and it's just kind of a second home for me. I feel really lucky to be there.

The Jazz Gallery has been another place where I've been playing since 2015 and they support tons of emerging artists, artists all through different stages of their career, and they've just grown and grown and this is, I think, their 30th anniversary year, so that's an amazing institution.

Closeup is fantastic and that's sort of the place I think all the other musicians are rooting for right now to survive and thrive because the booking there is really great. The vibe and everyone who works there is fantastic.

HP: Very cool. And can you talk about some of the places that you've released your music and some of what you've released? Big question, but...

KS: Yeah, just about all my music has been through Endectomorph, honestly. Most recently, I put out a double album called Quartets in October this past October. And the quartet that's playing tonight is sort of the next quartet in a way. The previous two were bands that have been around for a couple of years at least.

And then earlier last year, I released a live trio album called The Fate of the Tenor, which was recorded at Lowlands Bar in summer 2022 with a longstanding trio that I had with Walter Stinson on bass and Matt Honor on drums. So those are two of the most recent albums.

And I have an EP, my first EP's coming out in May, called lofi at lowlands, and it's a newer trio with Walter on bass and Kayvon Gordon on drums, and it has a lot of post-production. That's something new I've been experimenting with.

HP: Very cool. Okay, well, we're coming up on the end of our interview, excited to hear your set, but just wanted to ask, are there any upcoming shows or anything you want to plug to our listeners? I know you just mentioned the EP you have coming out this upcoming spring. But yeah, if there's anything else, particularly our New York-based listeners should look out for if they want to hear you live.

KS: Absolutely. So I'm playing this Tuesday, February 25th at Lowlands Bar with two musical heroes of mine, Thomas Morgan on bass and Eric McPherson on drums. We'll be playing tunes at 8 pm.

I'll also be with this quartet minus Eliza, because she'll be out of town. The great Jon Starks will be subbing on drums. That's at The Jazz Gallery on Pi Day, March 14th, sets at 7:30 and 9:30.

And then just one last gig, this exact band is playing at Lowlands Bar about a month and one day from today. That's Monday, March 24th, 2025. Sets at 8 and 9:30 pm.

HP: Beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing. And thanks for talking with us. Thanks for coming in tonight. I will be excited to hear your set.

KS: Amazing. Thanks.