Kevin Sun

Ten years ago, I wrote about my time playing jazz in Beijing . Now that I'm playing music full-time, I had the chance to spend a month in Hangzhou playing at 爵士黄楼 (JZ Huanglou): an old school residency-style gig, playing three 45-minute sets Monday through Saturday (off on Sundays).  First, the story of that time told through photos on film: On the first night of our gig, 70-some sets to go. L-R front: myself, Shinya Lin (our leader), Siran Gao, Wenjun Wu (bass), Hsienwen Chen (drums); L-R back: Thomas Julienne (bass, just completed the previous residency), Jean Baptiste Loutte (drums, also on that residency) Having a relaxing 3% ABV Chinese beer with Hsienwen before the gig (child running was unintentional but fortuitous) Selfie at the club, shirt by Dave Treut 杭州, self-explanatory Catching up with my old friend Bryan Qu, wng me play his Buescher "Big B" was partially responsible for my long decade-long journey in GAS, with his girlfriend Jianing Sax hang with Reny Bao ,...

35mm film selfie in lobby of Aachen, DE hotel (last day of tour) It's been precisely two weeks since I returned from my first professional go-around of Europe, which took place under the auspices of the Jochen Rückert New Quartet: 10 concerts, 1 masterclass (and one night off), +12 hour travel days on either end. Using Q1'26-era Claude AI to evaluate the travel schedule, approx. 30 hours by train, 20 hours by plane (counting the trans-Atlantic inbound/outbound leg), and a relatively insignificant amount of time in cars and walking in just under two weeks.  I deliberately packed very light—perhaps too light, as one promoter memorably misidentified my luggage as the "beauty box" for the one female member of the band ( Alex Ridout , trumpet). Some quick notes for my future self and maybe other musicians in preparing for their initial outings to foreign countries to play music in return for money, spiritual fulfillment, and glory: Packing & Gear Long flight? Might be...

More for me to remember than for you to read, but maybe you'll find something interesting in here: Films Watched: BLEAK MOMENTS HARD TRUTHS WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL INLAND EMPIRE TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA ACROSS 110TH STREET KILLER OF SHEEP THE ACCOUNTANT SCARECROW THE PARALLAX VIEW THE DESCENT BRANDED TO KILL A TOUCH OF ZEN (rewatched restored at Film Forum) BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA TRAINING DAY CURE MR. TURNER WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER HEAT  MISERY  ("let me ask you a jazz question") COLLATERAL NO OTHER CHOICE Live music: Dabin Ryu Trio at Lunatico Birthday Ass at Threes Brewing Mark Shim Trio at Bar Bayeux Steve Lehman/Mark Turner at The Jazz Gallery LoJo Brown at the Gallery Miles Okazaki and Bill Frisell Duo at Columbia University Miller Theater Andrew Cyrille solo at Close Up Ben Street Quartet (with Walter Smith III, David Virelles, Eric McPherson) at Close Up Ralph Alessi Quartet at Smalls M...

  Courtesy of my shows archive and Claude AI: 2025 Gig Wrapped Your 2025 Gig Wrapped A year of jazz, creativity, and countless stages You played 100 total gigs in 2025 That's averaging 8+ gigs per month! Top Venues Lowlands Bar 13 shows Close Up 12 shows Smalls Jazz Club 9 shows Ornithology Jazz Club 8 shows No Work Allowed 8 shows Most-Played Bands Kevin Sun Quartet 18 shows Ben Solomon Quartet ...

From Presidents' Day 2019 If the era-defining gig for me prior to the pandemic was the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra, than the corresponding post-pandemic gig would obviously be Jazz at Lowlands, formerly known as the "greatest bar in the world" according to a previous iteration of their website (that moniker seems to have disappeared in a recent rebranding exercise). According to my records, I've played at Lowlands over 150 times (the majority of which took place in late 2021 through late 2024), and it's unlikely that I'll play more frequently anywhere else in the coming years. The current runner up appears to be Bar Bayeux, where I've played over 75 times (most of those were the happy hour sets with Peter Watrous, so depends who you ask). For the hundreds of hours of bandstand experience (and easily upward of a thousand of hours clocked at 543 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn), I have the bar's owner, John Niccoli, to thank. John graciously  wrote the liner ...

Accidental selfie ca. January 2021, sweatshirt gifted to me by Walter & Matt for my 29th birthday The first time I played Dark Souls  was probably in September 2020, deep pandemic and almost exactly midway through my first decade in New York. I had a COVID pod with my triomates, Walter Stinson and Matt Honor, and I distinctly remember them putting the controller in my hands and saying, "You have to play this." They had alluded to the major parallel between the Souls games and my music at the time, namely the supposedly punishing difficulty level, and I quickly found myself pulled into the thrall of interactive entertainment in a way I hadn't felt since I was a pre-teen.¹ It's been years since that first intoxicating taste of Souls , and although I've wanted to write about the series and jazz for years, I never got around to committing many of my thoughts on the two  until now.  In retrospect, I think my fondness for the original installment, my earliest exposu...

Photographed at a private event in October 2025, one of my first few gigs playing this Selmer SBA One of the first things I did once I started getting a regular paycheck in August 2016 was to buy a saxophone, then another one, and another one, and then another; same with mouthpieces. At the very bottom of my complete gig archive , I also keep track of what equipment I've been using. I started keeping track in November 2017, about a year after I began switching equipment fairly regularly in search of my own sound and means of expression.  I had played the same 69xxx Selmer Mark VI since about 2008 through finishing my M.M. at NEC in 2015. When I went to Beijing in September 2015 before moving to NYC, I brought along my student Jupiter 700-series tenor, which I hadn't played since middle school. I had a sacrilegious but undeniable feeling at the time, which was: this horn seems to be more powerful than the VI. Sure, the sound was boxier and maybe less refined, but for playing liv...