Kevin Sun

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 profes...

A couple of people have asked me about my song " Kierkegaardashian , " which concludes my upcoming album Quartets , and its relation to the source material, which is Charlie Parker's " Kim ," so here goes: Back during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I spent some time overlaying multiple takes of Charlie Parker's solos on a given tune, adjusting the timing to align them roughly, and then seeing how the phrasing overlapped or diverged for curiosity's sake. I wrote a bit about this in a  blog post I called "Synchronic Bird,"   but I took it a step further with "Kim" by trying to compose a new song using the overlapping material.  First, I laid out transcriptions of each take one above the other, then chose phrases between the two takes that would create a new, super-long linear melody: I did this process for the entire solo, which spans multiple choruses, but "Kierkegaardashian" was intended as a miniature composition, so I only...

The in-universe sequel to "Depths II" is out now: "Heideggerdashian," a music video directed by Emma He.  On a musical note, this track, which opens side B of Quartets , is the complement to the closing track, "Kierkegaardashian." They're actually just alternate takes of the same piece, but with the improvised saxophone sections happening in opposite sections.  I composed "Kierkegaardashian" for  The Jazz Gallery Lockdown Sessions, No. 33 back in February 2021; the song is derived from multiple takes of Charlie Parker's improvisations on "Kim" (hence the title), with liberal use of octave displacement to produce the wide-ranging melody of the new song. Andrew Boudreau graciously learned and recorded the piece, originally intended for solo piano, which ended up being the outro credit music for my segment of the Lockdown Session. Heideggerdashian Director: Emma He Producer: Maddie McCann Editor: Emma He, Maddie McCann DP: Dan...

I've only found two instances of Bird quoting the 1934 Arthur Johnston/Sam Coslow tune "Cocktails for Two," and they both were recorded within two weeks of each other at the end of 1945. The song appears in Murder of the Vanities  (1934), released the year after the end of Prohibition with the repeal of the 18th Amendment as a result of the ratification of the 18th Amendment on December 5, 1933. The78prof on YouTube has provided an invaluable service in collecting the charted hits of American popular music in the early and mid-20th century, and a significant percentage of Bird's quotes can be identified as hit songs from the 1930s, which coincides with his formative adolescent years .  Duke Ellington's instrumental version from '34 was a hit and inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 2007; the only other version that received the same treatment was Spike Jones's from '45, which was recorded later and inducted earlier (1995, over a decade before E...

The Rufous-collared Sparrow, or "tico-tico" On March 12, 1951, Charlie Parker recorded the 1917 Zequinha de Abreu piece "Tico Tico" for a Norman Granz-produced session for Mercury, but he's on record quoting the tune at least three times in the years preceding. Once The earliest version comes from a set-closing version of "52nd Second Theme" from Billy Berg's Club in Hollywood, recorded just a few weeks after Bird's legendary "Ko Ko" session in New York. Bird slips it in at the top of the last A section of his solo , after which Dizzy comes in with a favorite quote of his own, "Rain on the Roof," and Billy Berg comes on the mic to announce the end of the set. In pop culture, the song was a major hit for Ethel Smith, who is featured playing "Tico Tico" in the 1944 musical movie Bathing Beauty , which is available on YouTube: It was also recorded by the Andrews Sisters , which includes English lyrics that make ex...

I only know of two instances in Bird's recorded discography where he quotes from the 1919 Irving Berlin tune "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." The first one I learned of (via Chasin' the Bird ) is the January 22, 1949 performance of "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid" live from the Royal Roost in midtown Manhattan.  (While preparing this blog post, I realized that this brief, half-minute outro from the broadcast is actually left off of the misleadingly titled The Complete Live Performances on Savoy , and isn't streamable on YouTube or online anywhere to my knowledge—but fortunately I have an LP copy of  Bird At The Roost, The Savoy Years - The Complete Royal Roost Performances, Volume Two , produced by the late great Phil Schaap, so here it is, ripped from my LP copy). Quote begins at 0:08 and runs until about 0:15 (last 4 bars of first chorus into the next chorus): The lyrics of this phrase go: "A pretty girl is like a melody /  That haunts you nig...

  More notes on the compositions that appear on  <3 BIRD   (see part 1  here , part 2  here , part 3  here , and part 4 here ). 13. Arc's Peel Arc’s Peel is based on Parker’s studio improvisations on “Scrapple.” "Arc's Peel" is the last of the  compositions originally composed for  The Jazz Gallery's  Lockdown Sessions, Vol. 33  to make it onto <3 Bird. As with "Cheroot" and "Mohawk," the initial strategy was to look at the two studio take solos overlaid and to identify any interesting patterns or musical effects that might suggest a direction for a composition: From my notes, I see that I was interested in playing with the idea of echoes or accumulations, as there are a number of phrases or shapes that seem to be handed off between the two improvisations (marked on the above as "echo"). There are also moments where the directions of lines either criss or diverge (notated in red with arrows), which I wanted to highlight for cont...

More notes on the compositions that appear on  <3 BIRD   (see part 1  here , part 2  here , and part 3 here ). 10. Sturgis Sturgis is based on Parker’s recorded improvisations on “Mohawk.”  [this and later introductory statements are mine from the liner notes] Like "Cheroot," I composed the miniature "Sturgis" for The Jazz Gallery's Lockdown Sessions, Vol. 33 that premiered in February 2021. The substrate for this short, through-composed line is "Mohawk," specifically Bird's two solo improvisations (the piece was named after the bassist Ted 'Mohawk' Sturgis , hence the title). In this case, I first overlaid the two solos, then tried to trace a path through both lines with the least amount of silence (a maximized solo line merging the two); then, the remainder would be a complementary "negative" solo line. On the original version of "Sturgis" that appeared on the Lockdown Sessions, I took advantage of the remote reco...

More notes on the compositions that appear on  <3 BIRD   (see part 1  here  and part 2 here ). 7. Cheroot Cheroot features the trio in extended dialogue over an accent map drawn from “She Rote.”  [this and later introductory statements are mine from the liner notes] What is an "accent map?" It's my fancy way of describing an extracted sequence of accents taken from an existing phrase (see notes to "Adroitness, Part II" ). As part of my dive into "Synchronic Bird," I also tried overlaying two takes of "She Rote," with the accents of the combined line forming the basis for "Cheroot." As a note, I composed this specifically for The Jazz Gallery's Lockdown Sessions, Vol. 33 back in February 2021, and the "She Rote" portion can be heard here . Below is my drawing of the accent map by looking at the two solos in conjunction and identifying the accents that I wanted to extract for the new melody: Using the above as a sta...

  More notes on the compositions that appear on <3 BIRD (see previous here ). 4. Composite Composite features the drums along a thickening web of melodies derived from four Parker blues compositions. [this and later introductory statements are mine from the liner notes] Lennie Tristano is quoted in Robert Reisner's Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker  (1962) as saying: The most  complex aspect of bop lies in the ingenuity with which the melodic line was  originated. It was creative. The context of the line breaks up into a large number  of precisely thought-out phrases, each of which is an idea in its own right and may  also be used in conjunction with any of the other phrases , and on any tune whose  chord structure is chromatic or diatonic. This may be compared with a jig-saw puzzle which can be put together in hundreds of ways, each time showing a definite picture which in its general character differs from all the other possible  pictures. ...