Kevin Sun

I find jazz Christmas music to be a strange cultural phenomenon, having not grown up with it playing around the house during the late Nov.-late Dec. seasons. But, after playing a couple holiday party-type gigs around campus this year, I understand why the tradition is so deeply rooted in the winter consumer cycle: the melodies are simple and catchy! And so they're also easy to pick up if you haven't played them before, which is a huge plus if you're being asked to play x  or y  holiday song by a frantic hostess and have to transcribe the bass player's sotto voce  rendition of said song in a couple seconds.  I thought I'd transcribe a couple more involved holiday tunes for Christmas: Charlie Parker blowing on Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," live at the Royal Roost on Christmas day, 1948; and Mark Turner's solo on the Willy Wonka classic "Pure Imagination," from the curious Warner Bros. Jazz Christmas Party  (1997) compilation, recorde...

Today is Woody Shaw's birthday, so I thought I'd share a transcription of one of his earlier solos from the classic Larry Young record Unity  (1965): Joe Henderson's F blues "If." I transcribed this solo shortly after finishing Art Farmer's solo over "Sippin' at Bells" from Cool Struttin'  (1958), another blues in F, and there's an expected but refreshing contrast between the two players on these specific tracks. I like how Shaw repeats some notes in his lines, like in m.17 or twice in m.28, which adds some texture in 8th note lines that are otherwise in smooth, continuous motion.  And it's impossible to not mention Shaw's harmonic choices, which seem surprisingly clear when put on paper: Gm7 pentatonic, Abm7 pentatonic (over I, I7 leading to IV, IV, and even over ii-V-Is based on the melodic context), and also pentatonic shapes over dominant scales that suggest a G7 or C7 pentatonic (maybe 1-3-4-5-7). But what really makes the...

Last month, I picked up Sonny Clark's  Cool Struttin'  (1958) from Princeton Record Exchange after remembering how my friend Luke Celenza once told me it was one of the first records that persuaded him to get into jazz. I've been listening to it plenty since and decided to lift Art Farmer's ear-catchingly clear and melodic solo over the bebop blues "Sippin' at Bells." I don't actually own any records of Farmer's as a leader and hadn't transcribed any of his playing before, but I was struck by the exceptional logic of his lines and how balanced his phrases sound; the voice-leading here is really something. Also, Sonny Clark's comping behind him feels great on this track. Here's the transcription: * * * * * For whatever reason, the majority of the trumpet solo transcriptions I've done recently have been over a 12 bar blues: Clifford Brown on "Wee-Dot," Freddie Hubbard on "Birdlike," Art Farm...

Check out this guest post on the nuts and bolts of planning, recording, designing, and releasing your debut record! It's written by my good friend, drummer, and trivia-master Curtis Nowosad, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada.             My name’s Curtis Nowosad and I'm a drummer from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. I recently released my debut album, The Skeptic & the Cynic , and Kevin asked me to write a post about what exactly it is that goes into the recording of an album and putting out your record.             Intro           In the broadest terms, you need three things: time, money, and music. No matter how much you plan, you’ll likely get run into problems that will delay the progress of your project (more on that later). For me personally, the entire process—from the decision to record to the album release—took almost one year to the day. As I star...

Some time ago, I posted a transcription of Wayne Shorter's classic solo on "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum" from Speak No Evil  (1964). Here's a transcription of the other horn solo on that track, Freddie Hubbard's concise but forcefully direct one-chorus statement.  It's the immediacy from the first few notes that really struck me hearing this solo: straight out of the head, there's a declarative quality to the solo (there's something about the fifths in bars 2 and 3 that stand out). How Freddie gets around the horn registerally is also noteworthy, I think—I've heard other trumpet players talk about how trumpet players like he and Woody Shaw got out of the stereotypical trumpet-centric style of playing (smaller intervals, very chromatic) and incorporated a saxophonic flexibility to get around through different octaves quickly and cleanly.  Even with that in mind, the way Freddie plays the bridge is also distinctly instructive: how he carefully paces the solo...

Joshua Foer at the Athanius Kircher Society Meeting, 2007 Joshua Foer, a young writer who also happens to be the younger brother of both novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and former New Republic editor Franklin Foer, published a book called Moonwalking with Einstein  in 2011 about studying "the art of memory," an approach to memorization that was reputedly developed by Simonides of Ceos in ancient Greece wherein one would store individualized pieces of knowledge in particular places (memory loci) within an imagined physical space (your memory palace).  The book is an easy read and isn't particularly technical, although there are some brief, interesting historical explorations and several humanistic meanderings in an attempt to answer questions Foer has about memory (in particular, there's a short discussion of epithet repetition in Homer's Odyssey  that's plenty of fun to read).  Memory has been on my mind for some time now—particularly, the benefits a...

It is said that "Donna Lee" went to the grave with Bird...in 1955. I just saw an entertaining Onion-style article in The Yard, Juilliard's independent student newspaper, called " Juilliard Releases Banned Repertoire List, '12-'13 ." Of course, I thought it was real at first, but it wouldn't stretch the imagination to think of a Manhattan School of Music or Smalls-style banned repertoire list at this point. Coming up with a blacklist would probably be easiest for saxophonists: -Inner Urge (especially in 7)   -Giant Steps/Countdown/26-2 (Liberia and Satellite are cool) -Donna Lee, under any circumstances -Cherokee (no faster than a walking ballad or else as a lilting waltz) -Impressions and other uptempo modal equivalents -Yes or No (other Wayne tunes are acceptable!) And probably for everyone else, just "Take Five" and "Chameleon." Did I miss any big ones?

Over the course of the past few lessons I've had with Miguel Zenón, I've been working on memorizing John Coltrane's solo on "Crescent," from Crescent  (1964). Miguel's told me that this era of Coltrane—the increasingly exploratory stuff on Impulse! from 1962 up until some of the really outer-space stuff in '65—is his favorite because of the way Coltrane plays with the intensity of other 'free' players (Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders) while filling his phrases with a density of harmonic information that is both incredibly precise and incredibly creative. I finished learning the solo this week, which means I'll start working on memorizing "Dear Old Stockholm" from Impressions  (1963); I'll be working out a lot of the ideas in "Crescent" in the months to come, I'm sure. Here's the solo, with a few comments here and there on what Miguel and I came up with w/r/t what's going on, m/h/r:   Over the dominant cho...

Things have been a bit hectic lately, so apologies for the lack of horizontal searching in the past week and a half. I thought I'd share a transcription of one of the first solos I learned in its entirety: Stan Getz on "East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)" playing duo with Kenny Barron on People Time , a live recording from the Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, March 1991.  I first started studying jazz after hearing Stan Getz's unreal sound on "The Girl from Ipanema," which I still think is one of the definitive and inimitable saxophone sounds of all time (I actually couldn't listen to Coltrane or Dexter Gordon for the first few years I began learning to play—I liked Getz's sound too much to divert much attention to other approaches). This particular recording is Getz's last recording, made three months before he passed away, and his playing is deep: his sound is more raw than in the live recordings in the years before this final record ( Anni...

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a guest post! Enjoy pianist Malcolm Campbell on Papo Lucca's approach to montuno playing . Papo Lucca, smiling Puerto Rican pianist Papo Lucca is one of the great salsa pianists of all time.   His father Quique Lucca started the band Sonora Ponceña in 1954, and Papo has directed it for the past 40 years or so.  I transcribed five of his montunos from Explorando, one of my favorite Sonora Ponceña albums, from 1978.  Papo Lucca was 32 at the time. More so than in jazz, the pianist in salsa music is central to the rhythmic drive of the band.  Since the percussion is spread out over a whole section of people, the pianist is much more akin to a jazz drummer in terms of the personal responsibility he has for the groove.  On top of this, he is also the primary (sometimes the only) chordal instrument. Papo basically has three modes of playing on this album: arranged hits, montuno, and...

The cover art is rather striking as well In August, I posted a transcription of Charlie Parker's solo on "Cheryl," from a live recording of unknown origin. I had gotten this recording in middle school from a friend of mine: the record was called "Early Bird," and didn't have too much information except that these tracks were from earlier on in Bird's career. When I tried transcribing the solo, I realized that the recording was pitched down a half step from C to B, which suggested that the recording had been slowed down somehow, although the quality of the recording was not noticeably distorted. Michael Griffin left this helpful tip on a previous post: " This was recorded at carnegie hall in 1949.As part of a christmas concert featuring Bud Powell's group, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker's quintet featuring Red Rodney on Trumpet." A bit of Internet searching seems to corroborate this statement, although it appears that the reco...

Thelonious Monk (b. October 10, 1917) would have been 95 years old today. In anticipation of and following this year's Monk competition, there was plenty said on the intersection of competitions and jazz—what the increasing trend towards competitions in jazz as a foothold into a career for young musicians means for the music, for the economics of this art form, and for the value of originality and creativity. I'll hopefully have some words to say about this broad topic, probably through a more directed look at specific phenomena in jazz ca. 2012 later on, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share my first Monk solo transcription, "Green Chimneys," in honor of Monk's birthday and also this quote from Robin Kelley's biography of the man, which I highly recommend. (You can find a transcription of Charlie Rouse's solo from the same track here ). As it turns out, Monk almost won a scholarship competition while in high school which would have led to his enr...