Kevin Sun

Yesterday was the 109th anniversary of Lester Young's birth in Woodville, Mississippi. I had meant to publish some thoughts on Young as I did last year around this time , but, alas, I'm a day late. I'd spent a large portion of 2017 learning Pres solos from '36 through '41, focusing primarily on his solos with Count Basie, but most of the solos I picked off those records I never got around to sharing. Here are some of my favorites from the first five years of his recording career, as well as some brief thoughts. Happy birthday, Pres!

Available May 26, 2018 It's no secret that I'm a devoted admirer of Mark Turner's saxophone playing and musical-spiritual vision , so I was pleased when saxophonist and fellow Turner-ite Jeff McGregor reached out to me last June about writing a foreword for a collection of Turner solo transcriptions. Jeff's collection, Mark Turner: Transcriptions & Essays , is a massive undertaking: 35 solo transcriptions that span major bands (Kurt Rosenwinkel, Fly, Billy Hart Quartet) and two decades of Mark's playing. When I saw an early version of the transcriptions in November, there was already over +120 pages of notated music, which has likely only expanded since then. 

On Thursday, March 16, 2017, the trio with Walter Stinson on bass and Matt Honor at the drums played The Jazz Gallery in New York. The next day, we drove up to Massachusetts and prepared the studio setup at Wellspring Sound, and we recorded the entire album on Saturday, March 18, 2017.  Just under a year later, Trio  is now available on the major music purchasing platforms (that is, except streaming):  Bandcamp iTunes Amazon CD Baby According to my records, the writing of the compositions that would form the core repertoire of the band began in late spring 2016, with more earnest rehearsing beginning in late summer of that year.  Just a few days ago, I returned to the Gallery with Matt and Walter and played through some of the older songs that we largely hadn't touched since the recording; it's amazing how much difference a year makes. We've covered a lot of new music since last March, including a new 30-minute work that I wrote between December a...