Samo Šalamon Interview with Kevin Sun (Dr. Jazz Talks #667)

[This interview took place on Saturday, April 11, 2026. Thanks, Samo!]

Samo: I've been a fan of yours for quite some time now.

Kevin: Oh, thanks.

Samo: I did a talk about a month ago with Max Light, who we've played with a lot, and that's kind of how I stumbled upon you. So I thought I'd drop you a line. I've been a huge fan of the quartet album — what was that, two years ago?

Kevin: Thank you, yeah. A couple of years ago.

Samo: That's a monster of an album, really. But I wanted to start with what's happening on the band-leading front. I saw you have the new Lowlands record, which you've been putting out regularly.

Kevin: Yeah, it's funny you ask. Band-leading-wise, I've honestly been doing less and less of it over the past year and a half or so. I've been pulling back, just because I did a lot of it coming out of the pandemic with Lowlands. There's this bar in Brooklyn, near where I live, where I started playing every week about four or five years ago. I did that for about three years — weekly gigs. Really grateful for the opportunity. The guy who owns the bar, John Niccoli, is a big music fan and a musician himself, so he basically let me do whatever I wanted there. That's how a lot of these records came out—from trying out lots of different music with different groups over the years.

More recently I've been putting out this series called lofi at lowlands, which is very heavily edited, produced music: a lot of post-production, overdubbing, experimental stuff for me. Honestly it was an excuse to learn how to use Logic—just basic DAW editing, since I'd never learned it. We recorded the live material for that almost exactly two years ago, April 2024, as a trio with Walter Stinson and Kayvon Gordon. We did some overdubs in the studio right after, and then I've just been gradually finishing the material; you know how it is, life happens. Two volumes came out last year, and this year there'll be three, and that'll be it. 

I set the deadlines early, basically, because otherwise I worried I'd never finish. For me personally, if I sit on recorded material too long, it starts to feel stale and I lose motivation. I think a lot of creative people feel that way about their work. So I set deadlines to hold myself accountable, so I can share what those guys did, since they spent so much time and effort learning the music and playing it well. I don't want to just not release it.

Samo: Of course. It's a way to document where you're at at a certain stage.

Kevin: Exactly.

Samo: And it's a working band. With Kayvon and Walter, you sound really tight together.

Kevin: Thanks. They're amazing—two of the best, most amazing people I've had the pleasure of working with. It's grown a lot over the past few years, in terms of knowing what to write and what not to write, and trusting that what they're going to improvise will be better than what I could write. So it's about striking a balance, just getting the conversation started and letting it happen.

Samo: What's your process when writing? I've listened to the quartet record so many times — those tunes, "Heideggerdashian," "Dance Notation," "Far East Western" — there's some heavy stuff happening rhythmically. It must be intense music to write. What's your process for coming up with all this?

Kevin: It's funny, a lot of those songs, like "Dance Notation," are from before the pandemic. I think I started writing it in 2019, we played it once, in February 2020, and then the pandemic happened and it got shelved for years. Typically with all the songs I write, I start with an idea, usually formal. Sometimes I'm just throwing darts at the wall. Sometimes I'm reading a novel or watching a film and something catches my interest; it could be anything. Like, "it's interesting they started the movie with a really long, slow section and then it suddenly picks up," or the opposite, starting in the middle of the action. If I haven't written a song like that, I'll try it. It could be that broad, or something really specific, like a harmonic color or a rhythmic idea.

A lot of the music I've written in the past couple of years is mixed meter: groups of bars of different lengths, subdivided in different ways, so it creates the illusion of the tempo fluctuating, speeding up and slowing down, or having different layers of density that modulate in a specific way. A lot of the writing I did when I first moved to New York, about ten years ago, was really just etudes—pieces built around a rhythmic or metric or harmonic idea I wanted to work on. A lot of that was inspired by musicians who write similarly demanding music, or people who've influenced me, like Miles Okazaki or Vijay Iyer, who I studied with at Harvard.

In more recent years I've been less aggressive about writing etude-type music; it's more at my leisure. Honestly, lately I've wanted the music to be more tonal. I've felt a pull toward digging into more classical Western harmony, Romantic-era harmony, probably because I grew up with some of that. I started on piano at eight, with pretty conventional Western classical training, which was great in retrospect, though I didn't appreciate it as a kid; I just wanted to play and hang out. Now that I'm in my mid-30s, that kind of music speaks to me in a way that connects back to my childhood and how I got started in music.

I really got into composers like Robert Schumann about a year and a half, two years ago; I was catching up, reading some history books. There are books by Charles Rosen that I liked, and a friend, the pianist Christian Li, recommended this long multi-volume history of Western Classical music by Richard Taruskin. I skimmed a lot of it, and it was mostly an excuse to listen to a lot of music and be reminded of what's out there. I was honestly a little embarrassed; I knew composers like Schumann by name but had never really listened, and then I heard one piece and it was some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard. So I'm catching up on lost time. That's part of the reason for the return to that music.

Samo: There's so much music out there.

Kevin: Endless. I can't listen to it all. 

Samo: You stumble on a player, or a classical composer—it's almost scary. Every day I teach, and students play me whatever—indie pop, indie folk, jazz—and I'm like, "who is this? They have a whole discography." I try to follow what's happening across the board, but it's impossible. 

Kevin: It's one of the great things—theoretically you'll never run out of inspiration, there's just so much. But sometimes, at least for me, there are stretches where I have trouble finding new inspiration, even though I know it's right there. I just need to dig a little.

Samo: If you get tired, it's heavy. But, you mentioned the classical stuff and starting on piano. When did the jazz bug hit? Did you hear someone specific?

Kevin: Yeah, definitely. It's very clear in my mind. A friend of mine took a summer enrichment class—I'm pretty sure it was at Westminster Choir College (a small school that I believe later got absorbed into another institution). It was close to where I grew up, and they offered classical music classes and lessons. My friend took a jazz or music appreciation class and got a CD of jazz recordings, which they lent me. I wasn't really listening to music for fun at the time, but I was curious, and I heard Stan Getz on "The Girl From Ipanema" I think and was just blown away. I remember it didn't even sound like a saxophone to me. My only frame of reference was fifth- or sixth-grade concert band; I'd never heard anyone with a sound that personal: airy, dark, expressive. I honestly didn't know a saxophone could sound like that. From there it opened up a lot of pathways: Lester Young, Coltrane, Charlie Parker. It all started from there.

Samo: So you went all the way back and checked out the old masters.

Kevin: Yeah, and it was very nonlinear. At first it was just whatever I could find, whatever jazz CDs were in the local library. A handful of modern CDs, Solo Monk, that kind of thing, but a lot of stuff I'd read about I just couldn't find. The albums that were easiest to find were the big ones—Kind of Blue, Giant Steps. Much later you start digging past that first layer. The first Lester Young I heard was with Oscar Peterson; that's all I could find at the time. I didn't hear the Basie band material from the '30s until college, and that blew my mind; a whole period of my life was just nonstop Lester Young for a couple of years. It's still my favorite music, but it was just hard to find back then. I didn't even know to look for early Basie. The only Basie I knew was the later stuff, like the "Atomic Basie" band, which is also great, but you miss the band that started it all. It's much easier now with the internet and YouTube.

I listened to that Oscar Peterson record as a teenager and thought it was cool, but I had no context. I didn't know about the decades of his [Lester's] life before that, when he was younger. To me he just sounded a bit older, more fragile, more vulnerable. Then you hear the early stuff and he sounds invincible, youthful—and when you connect the dots, it's really profound.

Samo: When did that switch happen for you? I hear this progression in your writing, from Steve Lehman through Miles and beyond. Even further, maybe. When did you find that other music?

Kevin: It's very clear in my mind. In 2012, I think I was a sophomore or junior in college, I met Vijay Iyer, who was doing a composition commission with the Silk Road Ensemble; I think they were in residence at Harvard. He mentioned he'd be involved with an international workshop for jazz, improvised, and creative music, and suggested I apply. I did, and got in. I didn't really know what it was going into. He and Miles Okazaki were both ensemble coaches for a week; Steve Lehman was there, Tyshawn Sorey too. I heard all this music I didn't know existed. At that point I was still pretty much in my own bubble, with only light exposure to modern 2000s jazz. So that was mind-blowing—hearing Jonathan Finlayson talk about what he'd learned from Steve Coleman, that whole world of the AACM and the generations coming out of it. It blew the door wide open.

I started seeking that music out, staying in New York over a couple of summers just to catch as many shows as I could, a lot of improvised music, people with a jazz background pushing the boundaries of composition and improvisation, really demanding music. That's where it started. I moved to Brooklyn in the fall of 2015 and it just continued, playing sessions with people writing similar music or music influenced by that world. I've been running with it ever since, and now there's even more of it—younger musicians in their twenties writing amazing, adventurous music. It's endlessly inspiring.

Samo: When you moved to New York, what was that like? I've done interviews with a lot of saxophonists, talking to older guys like Bob Malach about coming up in the late '70s, when Michael Brecker and Dave Liebman and Steve Grossman were already around. Then you talk to someone like Mark Turner and it's the same thing: "Everyone was there." What was it like for you, as a young player, coming to New York, getting first gigs, forming your perceptions of the scene?

Kevin: It was daunting. Really inspiring, of course—going to a ton of shows. I knew some people already from spending time in New York during college summers, but there were just so many more people and sessions happening than I expected. It was pretty intimidating at first. I went to some jam sessions, met a lot of cool people, but also had some challenging experiences trying to figure out where the bar was set for an average professional musician. It was hard to find work; I probably played three gigs my whole first year [ed. note: approximately 9 gigs in NYC from October 24, 2015–October 23, 2016]. The rest of the time was barely anything. I did some teaching; Vijay had me TA for him, so I commuted to Boston for a semester. I did random gigs here and there, and grant writing, which I'd also done in college.

I did get to play a lot, though. I put together my first trio with Matt Honor and Walter. It wasn't even really a band, more a workshop. I'd write a chart for a really hard Miles Okazaki tune, or a Kurt Rosenwinkel song I wanted to work on, and ask if they wanted to dig into it. That grew into gigs, just from working the music out. Very gradual. At a certain point I stopped going to as many public sessions and started playing more with the same people, or people who wanted to work on specific material. 

Now I do a mix: sometimes I meet people to work on something specific, and sometimes I'm happy just to play tunes with whoever, to keep my skills sharp. I like the variety. Over the past ten years there have been periods where I'm mostly playing original music, and then I miss just stretching out on a standard without a chart in front of me, and other times I swing back the other way and play a lot of jazz. I miss certain aspects of being challenged by complex, formal music with specific demands. It's a never-ending balancing act, and each side informs and deepens the other.

Samo: You mentioned the trio with Matt and Walter, and since then you've done so much band-leading, recorded a lot of records. Did you start leading bands right when you got to New York, as a way to get gigs?

Kevin: Yeah, I'd say it was out of necessity. The first things I ever led were at the Shrine and at Silvana, uptown—honestly just because they were the only places that would give me a date, an hour or two to play. So I took it, paid the band out of pocket, and it was a lot of rehearsing, but I felt like I was getting better, and the band was sounding better and better. At a certain point I thought, "why not record?" We already have a book of music we're going to keep playing, and it might help to document it. That's how the first record, the trio record, happened, and a few follow-ups came after.

In between, I wanted to write for a larger group—quartet, quintet—and longer-form pieces, since the pieces I'd initially written were very short and dense, tied to the kind of complex short forms I was studying at the time: music you can actually memorize because the cycles are so short. Then I wanted the opposite: something more through-composed, where you think about the arc and narrative of a piece and create episodes to feature different aspects of the band and the musicians. I alternated between those approaches.

After the pandemic, with Lowlands, I felt ready to do more quartet material, a more traditional format. Part of why I did the trio in the first place was practical: fewer people to pay, no piano needed, no worrying about bringing a keyboard or guitar amp to the venue. It's also more challenging in certain ways. I grew up playing more with a chordal instrument, like most people, and I think I used that as a bit of a crutch. Playing trio makes you more responsible for the time, the harmony—even basic things like really hearing the pitch of the bass and relating to it as someone playing a treble instrument, locking in with the rhythm section. That took years of discipline, trying to become more of a rhythm-section-minded player. At a certain point I felt ready to add another voice back in and orchestrate with a chordal instrument again, and that's how the more recent music emerged.

Samo: I like that: The Fate of the Tenor, which is a nod to the old Joe Henderson record, right?

Kevin: Oh yeah, State of the Tenor. I feel a little bad about that title, honestly. I'm almost certain I didn't come up with it. I think my friend Dana said it, though when I mentioned it to him he said, "No, I never said that." Someone said it, though — there's no way I'd have come up with that title on my own.

Samo: I love it. How did you become part of the scene? I heard you on the Jacob Garchik record, and on one of the last Adam O’Farrill records, For These Streets, such a monster record.

Kevin: Thanks; that's an amazing record. It's all pretty individual, just hanging out and meeting people. Adam and I go further back; we overlapped at the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College, which I did my junior and senior years of high school. I grew up in New Jersey, about an hour by train, and I'd come in on Saturdays for classes, combo, and lessons—an amazing experience. That's where I met Adam; I think he was a sophomore when I was a senior. He was already incredible, sounded like an ancestral spirit in music. I went to school in Boston after that, so I didn't see him for a while, and then when I came back to New York we reconnected and started calling each other for gigs.

Jacob—I honestly don't remember exactly how that happened. Probably from seeing him play, or maybe someone like Anna [Webber] recommended me for that record; it's possible. A lot of it came from seeing shows in Brooklyn: Ibeam, Barbès, Cornelia Street Café [in Manhattan] when it was still open. I'm not a super outgoing person by nature—pretty reserved—so it takes a lot of energy for me to go up and say hello to a stranger, even someone I really admire. That's actually made it harder in some ways. But I've tried to make more of an effort over the years, partly because I'm older now and care less what people think, and partly because life is short — someone I admire might not always be around, and I want them to know how I feel. It's been gradual.

Samo: I've wanted to do sideman work for a long time myself.

Kevin: I had a great conversation about that with Mark Turner a few years ago. I had a day job for about ten years—most of my time in New York—and the last couple of years I'd been thinking about leaving it, worried that time was running out to really pursue music. I asked Mark for advice, and he told me straightforwardly, "You should just do it. You won't regret it." Then I asked how to find work as a sideman, and he broke it down in very practical terms: you need to build something, figure out what that is and how to do it if you want opportunities to come your way. If you don't want to do that, that's fine too, but that's how it works.

So the past year and a half has been a lot of that—not necessarily focusing on weaknesses, but being more perceptive and accountable about the things I feel I should be able to do as a versatile, professional saxophonist and woodwind player in New York. That doesn't mean I want to do everything—I'm not trying to work on Broadway, for instance—but just being well-rounded, having the basic skills to do a good job as a sideman: presenting melodies convincingly, melodically, starting and ending on time.

Samo: So important. Mark is so direct. I love that about him. He hides nothing; he'll just tell you. 

Kevin:That interview he did with you was beautiful.

Samo Oh yeah, that was great.

Kevin: I was sending clips to friends: "check this out."

Samo: Really? That's awesome. I love Mark. I played with him about twenty years ago for the first time; I was so green. I sent him an email out of nowhere: "Hey Mark, would you like to do a tour?" And he said sure. I was like, "Really? Okay." It was two weeks; every gig felt like a semester of touring, an irreplaceable education. How to act on stage, how to prepare for a gig—basic things nobody tells you. It's great to learn just from watching someone else do it. 

Kevin: It's the most natural thing, the way animals have learned for thousands of years, basically, by watching the elders.

Samo: Exactly. Well, sorry, Mark, but he's becoming an elder now! That's how it's meant to be—preserving that. I also saw you playing with Jochen Rueckert, by the way.

Kevin: Yes! 

Samo: That's amazing, man.

Kevin Sun: Yeah, he's an amazing player, I've learned a lot. We started playing together about a year ago: his new band, this chordless quartet, with Alex Ridout and Hamish Smith. We just played in Europe last month.

Samo: How was that? Your first longer European tour?

Kevin: Fun, but tiring. A lot of the tour was just learning how to travel like a professional. I did my best beforehand, asked people like Anna Webber for advice, people who'd toured a lot more, but you really just have to do it and see what happens. We're going back in November, so I've already written down things I want to do differently. 

There's the musical side, and then there's the day-to-day logistical side. Jochen is so on top of things, such a professional bandleader; the bar is set really high. If I ever booked a tour like that myself, I don't know if I could match that level, but I'd aspire to it. It was so smooth—obviously things come up, anything can happen on the road, but over two weeks there were basically no disasters. From what I hear from other people, that's not usually the case.

Samo: How do you keep up creatively on a tour like that, playing every gig at the highest level? That's sometimes a struggle for me.

Kevin: It was only my first real experience with it, but one obvious thing: finding time to exercise helped a lot. The first four or five days I didn't manage it—timing was tight and I hadn't planned for it, even though I'd brought clothes. Before one gig, on day five, I found ten minutes for a light jog, and that night on stage I had so much more energy and focus. It made a huge difference. I also noticed pretty quickly, after four or five nights, that I'd get bored with my own playing, sense that I was spinning my wheels. Once you notice that consciously, it can get in the way. So finding pockets of time—even during soundcheck, warming up properly, or just ten minutes of practicing something new—was enough to feed the improvisational side of things, give you something to work with.

There were also tunes where I was still figuring out how to blow over the harmony in a convincing way, especially in a chordless format. There are different ways to imply harmony between just the bass and the treble voice. So on some tunes I tried different changes or approaches on different nights, and if something stuck, I kept it. I've noticed other people, like Kayvon, taking notes on the road about things to try on certain tunes, and now I understand why: if you don't do that, it just defaults to autopilot, whatever happens naturally. That's fine if it's already great, but if you feel like you want to move somewhere new and haven't found it yet, it helps to be conscious about it and write it down. 

These musical perceptions happen so fast on the bandstand, and they disappear like dreams: once you're off stage you forget they happened. So I try to jot things down quickly, so that the next day, after six hours of travel and being exhausted, I still remember: "There's this one chord I want to change," or "this voice-leading move might unlock something," or a rhythmic idea, like realizing after playing a tune enough times that it can be phrased a totally different way, or across the barline. Having just two options gives you every gradation between them, every permutation of moving back and forth. That's often all you need, just a foot in the door, and it can be a real creative relief, opening up new possibilities.

Samo: Good advice. It's hard sometimes. You get sick of yourself, feel like you're repeating.

Kevin: Yeah, these are tough issues: physical and mental focus. But I try to stay aware that for most of the listeners, virtually all of them, it's the first time they're hearing it, so it's fresh for them. It's okay to repeat: all the greats did. I think back in the day there was less pressure around it, because there wasn't the same visibility; no one's posting videos to the internet. It's kind of like how people notice, from tour photos, that someone's only wearing the same three outfits. It doesn't really matter, but musically it's similar. That's what people are paying for, though; they don't want you to sound like someone else, they want you to sound like you. So it's about balancing that against also feeling like you're progressing, not just repeating yourself.

Samo: It's a personal thing. I remember the elders I played with, like Bob Moses and Arild Andersen, saying things like, "We played Munich yesterday, today we're in Hamburg. The people in Hamburg haven't heard the music yet, so it's your problem, not theirs, if you play the same thing." For them it'll be fresh, like you said; it's just a question of how you solve it for yourself. It's an interesting thing to flip around from the audience's point of view; you only really encounter that once you're touring.

Kevin: Right, for me this was kind of a first. I'd done some shorter tours I organized myself, but this was almost twice as long as anything I'd done before. So staying fresh, for myself and for the band, really became apparent.

Samo: I saw you also have some quartet gigs with Max Light coming up in the fall. Is that a new project?

Kevin: The band isn't new; we played a lot in 2023, and some in 2024. We recorded this music in the fall of '24, and I've only just now, two years later, gotten around to putting it out — I got behind on a lot of these projects. The fall gigs are tied to that album coming out. That's with Max, Walter Stinson, and Jon Starks, an amazing drummer that Max and I both went to NEC with. A lot of that music we'd played a bunch already at Lowlands. After recording it, I started editing it, somewhat like the lofi [at] lowlands process, though not as extreme, since these were compositions not really meant to be heavily edited. But it did benefit from some of the basic post-production skills I picked up working on the Lowlands material, so I integrated some of that. The listening experience ends up being more like a modern improvised quartet record, but with some sonic details and effects to make it pop a bit more, and hopefully feel more personal and memorable.

Samo: Looking forward to it. I wanted to ask about your liner notes: you've written a lot of them. How did that start? You write good liners.

Kevin: I have no idea, honestly. I was an English major in college, focused in creative nonfiction. I wrote a thesis about the summers I spent in New York learning how to play jazz.

Samo: We're the same; I studied literature.

Kevin: Oh, great. It's always nice to meet another musician with that background; there are others too. Miles Okazaki studied English at Harvard, and Alex Hitchcock, saxophonist, also studied literature. I used to read a lot, and I wrote a bit in college for the magazine of the school newspaper: longer-form, creative nonfiction rather than news. I love reading essays in that vein, and I think I just tried writing in a similar style.

I think Curtis Nowosad, a great drummer from Canada I know from Banff, was probably the first person to ask me to write liner notes. Maybe because of that, other people started asking. It's the same as with gigs, people just ask around for who's good at something, whether it's liner notes or photography. I kept doing it, though I never advertised it; it's almost always for friends, not strangers. I still do it occasionally, but because music takes up so much of my time, 

I honestly feel like I was a better writer six or seven years ago, since I don't use that muscle as much these days—and especially with AI now, I don't know what to make of any of it. But I think people appreciate someone listening closely, especially if it's a fellow musician they trust to understand what's happening on a basic formal level, and maybe offer some insight into the improvising process.

Like with Adam O'Farrill's latest record, I listened to it a bunch, jotted down notes, and tried to turn them into prose, and I just couldn't. I told Adam, "Would you be okay with something more like strange poetry instead?" And luckily he was fine with it. Honestly, I think the music speaks for itself at that point; you don't need to say much about it. If anything, too much writing might distract from it. So I just tried to highlight a few perceptual things and feelings. In my experience lately, poets tend to write some of the best liner notes. I've enjoyed reading stranger, more abstract writing about music more than drier, conventional writing. I also think AI is going to replace a lot of the generic ad-copy-style liner notes, for better or worse, though a lot of that writing wasn't especially creative or insightful to begin with. Some of it is, but a lot is pretty cookie-cutter.

Samo: That's the scary part, but I think the genuinely creative stuff will stay afloat.

Kevin: Yeah, I don't think it can be replaced, or at least it'll take a lot longer. 

Samo: I think next time I should ask Suno, "Can you write a Kevin Sun composition?"

Kevin: I'd love to hear that.

Samo: I actually tried something like that once with a student, downloaded it during a lesson,  and it was terrible. I deleted it. It can do convincing generic pop or rock, whatever recognizable genre already exists, like a John Mayer-ish vibe, and it sounds pretty convincing. But that's a whole other can of worms. What's on your schedule coming up, records, tours?

Kevin: The big thing—well, there's the tour with Jochen in November, similar length, ten to twelve days. Before that, I'm going to China at the end of this month for a month-long residency in Hangzhou, with the great pianist Shinya Lin. It's Shinya’s gig for two months, and I'm there for four weeks: two weeks with one rhythm section, two weeks with another. Six nights a week, three sets a night. It's a nice club; I played there once on tour in 2018 and haven't been back. I have family in China, and I haven't spent that much uninterrupted time there since I started my day job back in 2016; I used to go back a lot more to play.

After that I'm going to Seoul for a week with some friends—Dabin Ryu, a great pianist who's already going to be there, helped set up some gigs, and the composer and bassist Seajun Kwon will be there too.

Summer's still open, and in the fall there's the tour. Otherwise, hopefully some time to just be around New York, not too busy, so I can practice and maybe compose. I haven't written much new music in the past year and a half. I used to write really consistently, since I moved to New York. I had a goal of one composition a month, and it kept going for years. Last year I finally stopped forcing that. I want to figure out what direction I want to take my own music.

I've had a newer band for about a year now: piano, bass, drums, with Anthony Pearlman, Jay Rattman, and Eliza Salem. I've written some new music for that group; we played together for the first time since December just a few days ago. Some of it involves transcribing spoken dialogue and setting the rhythms of speech to music. I know that was kind of a trend over ten years ago and people mostly moved on from it, but I'd never done it, and it was really fun, even though it's time-consuming. I only managed a couple of tunes. Improvising over those forms is really eye-opening. Funny enough, people at gigs would ask if a piece "sounded like speech"—they could tell the rhythms came from speech, which is wild for something so abstract, purely instrumental improvised music. I'm not sure if I'll keep doing it, but it's one possible thread for the summer if I have the time.

I've also played a lot this past year with Ben Solomon, an amazing saxophonist and composer; basically a two-tenor quartet for the past year and a half. He has a residency every third Friday at Ornithology in Bushwick, and plays Smalls every few months too. It's been an amazing saxophone education: he's just a beautiful player and a really nice person. It's influenced how I approach the horn. I've changed my setup a lot over the past year, gotten pretty deep into the gear side of things with him, trying different mouthpieces. I've learned a lot about what's possible. The mouthpiece I'm playing now, he actually bought for me; I'd been using a different one in Europe, wasn't happy with it on some recordings, mentioned to him I wished I had a particular kind for more volume, and he happened to find one in Chicago for a good price and got it for me. I've been playing it for a few weeks now. He's been a great force for good in my life.

Samo: Beautiful. You two should record something.

Kevin: I hope so. We've talked about maybe doing a live record at some point. Honestly, the longer that gets put off, the better for me, in a way: more time to practice and try to sound decent next to him. He's a force of nature.

Samo: You're a great player too, come on.

Kevin: Thanks.

Samo: So that's the big picture of what's coming up. You're super busy.

Kevin: Everyone is, ideally—just trying to keep a lot of balls in the air. Things are good. This is really just the first three and a half months since I started doing music full-time, and it's been a great learning experience: trying to stay healthy, focused, motivated. But I can't really complain. I try to strike a balance, keep going out to support live music. I'm seeing Adam tonight at Close Up.

Samo: Say hi to his band for me.

Kevin: I will. It's endless; you can go anywhere. I saw Sullivan Fortner play two nights ago, so good. Though it's different from when I first moved here—I used to go out every night, and now that's dropped off a lot.

Samo: Probably healthy, too. But it's amazing how alive the scene still is. It never stops. I remember talking to Max about how there was this huge downtown scene in the '90s, then the 2000s, and in between I thought, what's happening now? But after talking to you, checking out your music and who you play with—your generation, Max, Walter, all these guys—it's clearly a whole new burst of energy right now.

Kevin: Yeah, there are so many amazing musicians, and younger ones too. Maybe part of it is coming out of the pandemic—it took a few years to feel normal again—but also new clubs opening, like Close Up. It feels like there are more venues now, which is great; we need places to play. Everything's hard economically and financially, but people still show up to support live music, and that's all you can hope for.

It's kind of random, but I saw Jim Black play yesterday at Barbès, right around the corner from me, and I chatted with him for a second. He was saying the same thing, that the scene feels so strong right now. He'd just come back and seen some music and felt this energy just from being back in New York.

Samo: So many new clubs—last time I was in New York, pre-COVID, half of these didn't even exist.

Kevin: Exactly, a lot of it happening in Brooklyn.

Samo: DIY stuff, too.

Kevin: Yeah, it happens everywhere. It's how it was done in the past, and now it's happening again, however people can manage it. I see it with some of the younger players—I felt the same way when I first moved here, like, "it's so hard to get a gig, I'll just do it anywhere." I remember doing a bunch of gigs—not my own—in a bicycle shop in Bushwick. The shop was closed at night, and whoever set it up would just say, "you want to do music? Fine, do it here." Racks and racks of bikes, and people would walk by, see this improvised, experimental stuff happening, and get curious and wander in.

Samo: Real New York, Brooklyn stuff. People connecting, being open, and things happen again.

Kevin: Right, just getting off the internet and seeing people.

Samo: Stumbling in.

Kevin: Absolutely.