Kevin Sun

It's been a pleasure working on and witnessing the Creative Music Convergences curated by Vijay Iyer at Harvard yesterday and today, April 7th and 8th, 2016. I put some program notes together for these two evenings of creative music, herewith: Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith Vijay Iyer’s introduction to Wadada Leo Smith’s music came in the early 1990s after Iyer read an interview with saxophonist-composer Anthony Braxton, wherein he spoke of Smith “in the most superlative terms possible.” This led to Iyer’s picking up Th e Flam (1975, Black Saint) by saxophonist Frank Lowe, featuring Smith on trumpet in a chordless quintet setting alongside saxophone, trombone, bass, and drums. Smith’s playing, distinguished by his attention to space and silence and by his relational conception of ensemble sound, was revelatory. “I heard great silences, toneless columns of air, long tones that cut diagonally across the hubbub of the ensemble,” Iyer recalled in...

www.jazzspeaks.org As Keith Jarrett averred in an interview with Ethan Iverson, " I hate reading other people’s interviews, because I don’t want them to be boring, but they’re never filled with much at all." The art of interviewing is not easy, and it's something I learned a great deal about and gained a great deal of respect for the summer after my freshman year of college, when I worked on the Leonard Lopate Show at WNYC. At the end of that summer, I thought at the time that I would never do another interview ever again, but then The Crimson came along and then, after that, Jazz Speaks , The Jazz Gallery's blog. Leonard's brand of live, unedited interviewing is especially remarkable, but I've also always been partial to Terry Gross on WHYY's Fresh Air.   I'll say this glibly because it's true: I can't believe it's already been a year. It seems like just yesterday that I was buying economy packages of bottled water at Duane R...

Depending on how you look at it, friends' and acquaintances' gig postings on Facebook can either be pleasantly informative or otherwise a nuisance. If you use Facebook primarily for professional matters—networking, publicity, etc.—then postings are fine. When I started using Facebook, though, I never thought that I'd be adding people as "friends" who I'd only met once at a jam session, or people who I hadn't actually met but had enough mutual contacts to warrant adding them online. At this point, Facebook for me is about 50% professional networking and 50% social diversion; adding Twitter into the equation muddies the waters of my relationship with social media even more. Earlier today, Steve Lehman posted a string of tweets regarding social media and self-promotion: Seriously considering starting a BLOG that replaces self-promotion masquerading as transparency with actual transparency. Sharing good & bad — Steve Lehman (@thestevelehman) July 3...