Interview with D'Addario for QUARTETS (November 14, 2024)

Back in November, I played Close Up NYC with both the bands from Quartets. Earlier that night, I also spoke with fellow saxophonist and D'Addario rep Mike Talento at the club for a video interview promoting the record and also discussing my preference for D'Addario's synthetic VENN reed. The full interview with clips from that night's show is on YouTube, and I'm sharing an AI generated transcript with hyperlinks below:

Introduction

My name is Kevin Sun, and I play the tenor saxophone. We are at Close Up in New York City, and tonight I'm celebrating the release of my newest album, Quartets. 

Beginnings

I began playing the tenor saxophone when I was 10 years old in fourth grade [ed: actually, I started on alto in fourth grade; totally misspoke here, but I switched primarily to tenor in the seventh grade, if I remember correctly]. My parents chose the saxophone because they saw Bill Clinton play it on TV, and they decided I should try it. 

Being a professional saxophonist is a daily practice of trying to improve myself musically and finding ways to better serve the music. My favorite part of playing a show is reaching a point where I feel like I'm not consciously playing, and I'm kind of entering a state where I can kind of flow with the music and be part of the experience. It doesn't happen at every show, and it actually doesn't happen as often as I like it too, but when it does, typically, it's the result of a lot of practice, a lot of rehearsal. It's just the right circumstances in terms of the audience, the space, the alignment of the stars. So when that happens, it makes me really happy. 

So, this instrument that I'm playing is a King Super 20. It was made, I believe, in 1950—a classic  mid-century American saxophone. This particular model is a very early model of the King Super 20, and I sought it out specifically because this is the model that Charlie Parker played on for most of his career. It is very responsive. It's mechanically very fast—I would argue maybe the fastest American made saxophone of the era, comparable to Selmer, which is French made—but it has a lot of power. I think that combination really speaks to me in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish on the instrument.

Endectomorph Music

Endectomorph Music is a recording label that I founded after I moved to New York, essentially to document my own music, but I also support, document, and release the music of a lot of my peers and collaborators. Since 2016, we've released nearly 25 albums with many more to come next year. My latest album, Quartets, is a double album, and essentially it documents the music, the books of two separate quartets that I had over the past couple years—the first one being with a band of collaborators who I've worked with for over five, six years: Dana Saul on piano, Walter Stinson on bass, Matt Honor on drums, and the second quartet was more recent. I started it last year, and it features Christian Li on piano, also Walter on bass, and Kayvon Gordon on drums. 

Upcoming Projects

Some projects of mine that I am looking forward to include another quartet record that I recorded this past week. It's with guitar, drums, and bass, and it collects music that I've been working on over the past year, and will feature a pretty heavily studio produced component. I also have another recording of live trio music that involves a lot of experimental editing [i.e. lofi at lowlands 一]. So I'm working on that, and I have another project with the pianist of this band, Christian Li. It's a duo project that involves a lot of electronics, and we're dealing with some rather archaic, early 20th century American pop music through an experimental lens, so we were in the process of editing that. 

Typically, with new compositions, I usually have some sort of concrete idea that I want to work out, or something that I'm curious about. I find that taking the time to write and rewrite and revise would give me a better way into exploring the idea. It can come from anything as specific as a rhythmic idea or some sort of metrical idea, or could be something a little more abstract, like a title. You know, maybe a title will come to me and it will suggest some mode of musical expression, and that'll be something that I try to flesh out and develop and explore in a composition. 

Inspirations

My continuing inspirations for creating music really come from seeing live music, seeing my peers, and older artists who inspire me, and, you know, looking for sources of inspiration beyond music. So in film, interactive media, like video games, other forms of art, I'd say just day to day to life experience. I have many inspirations. They include Lester Young, Charlie Parker, as well as artists who are still working today like Mark Turner. 

This is Hidetaka Miyazaki. He is the president of FromSoftware, which is the video game company best known for games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne. He's definitely a creative inspiration for me, and I find a lot of crossover between those video games and contemporary improvised music. 

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of video game music. YouTube, there are a lot of mixes of early 2000s, video game music on different consoles, and it's kind of a totally different sound palette and approach, kind of lets me access a different space creatively. Sometimes, for some of my compositions, I imagine writing a piece that could fit in a video game and then adapting it to a lot of traditional jazz in. 

I think my friends would probably say Dark Souls or one of those games most closely resembles my music because there's an element of challenge but also fairness, and I think that kind of loop is rewarding in its own right and makes it worthwhile to endure the challenge. 

VENN Reeds

I'm a big fan of D'Addario's synthetic saxophone reeds. They're incredibly consistent, incredibly responsive. They offer a broad spectrum sonically, in terms of not just mids, but also lows and highs. There's a lot of flexibility. I'm able to play all sorts of different dynamic ranges across the range of the instrument. I really haven't played a reed that comes close, in my opinion, I've tried a decent amount, but I'm really happy with the VENN reeds. I would say I prefer VENN reeds over traditional cane reeds because of the flexibility and the tone colors that they offer. 

Every woodwind reed player can empathize with the experience of dealing with inconsistent reeds, and honestly, that issue is virtually gone when you play these reeds. Like, they're all so consistent day to day, week to week, month to month. There's no warmup period, really. Like, I can just pick up the horn and start playing immediately, and it feels great. It's really unique. 

The State of the Scene

I'm not really sure how I feel overall about jazz music today. I do feel like there's a lot of work to be done in terms of reaching out to audiences and making sure that we're able to sustain a jazz scene, but there's so much amazing music happening in jazz today and more creative musicians than ever, and that's extremely inspiring.

[at the time of this interview, I was playing a refaced Otto Link Four Star, a very early model, that had been opened to a 7*. I've since gone through a whole bunch of equipment changes (playing an RPC .110 Ultem as of late May 2025), but I've been VENN reeds between 2.0 and 3.0 throughout]