Kevin Sun

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 creat

KS: It's been a month since the release of The Fate of the Tenor , and I've been really happy with the response from listeners and friends who had a chance to listen. On that note, I'd like to share a guest post that my dear friend Juanma Trujillo graciously put together for the occasion, which describes his approach and thought process regarding the live recording. Juanma and I have worked together for years not only as performers, but also on the actual recording, mixing, and production of a number of my releases.  * * * * * The Fate Of The Tenor – A Technical Addendum  By Juanma Trujillo By the time Kevin reached out to me to record this album, I had already sold and shipped out a lot of my gear as I was moving out of the US. I had my two nicest ribbon mics, and Kevin had a few mics of his own that we used. Some of the other mics were sourced among our community of musician friends and engineers (a detailed list is provided with the liner notes ). Everything was recorde

Artwork by Sharif Anthony for "Origin Story" I composed "Origin Story" in early February 2018 while deep in the throes of my Lester Young immersion period, which lasted for several years as I found myself magnetically drawn to the playing of Pres.  Originally, I envisioned writing an album's worth of music inspired by Lester Young (similar to what I ended up doing with <3 Bird  during the pandemic), but of the few pieces I did manage to write at that time (including "Bad Lady" and "Facsimilate"), I think "Origin Story" was perhaps the most literal and compositionally straightforward of those.  With an unstoppable conviction in the power of Lester Young's rhythmic line and casually elegant melodic sense, I figured: what would happen if I tried playing the solo backwards? Not literally backwards, but keeping the integrity of the original rhythmic phrasing (i.e. the melodic rhythms) and just reversing the sequence of pitches?  I