Kevin Sun

From Presidents' Day 2019 If the era-defining gig for me prior to the pandemic was the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra, than the corresponding post-pandemic gig would obviously be Jazz at Lowlands, formerly known as the "greatest bar in the world" according to a previous iteration of their website (that moniker seems to have disappeared in a recent rebranding exercise). According to my records, I've played at Lowlands over 150 times (the majority of which took place in late 2021 through late 2024), and it's unlikely that I'll play more frequently anywhere else in the coming years. The current runner up appears to be Bar Bayeux, where I've played over 75 times (most of those were the happy hour sets with Peter Watrous, so depends who you ask). For the hundreds of hours of bandstand experience (and easily upward of a thousand of hours clocked at 543 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn), I have the bar's owner, John Niccoli, to thank. John graciously  wrote the liner ...

I continue to maintain the resolute "no reviews" policy on this blog, which stands for a variety of reasons: the desire not to be pegged as a jazz critic/journalist/writer, to not surrender my prideful, beleaguered defense against Conflict Of Interest, to not burn bridges in a digitized jazz community where a smolder easily finds plentiful accelerant, and so on. However, I think it's important to use whatever platform I have to highlight work by friends, colleagues, and elders that should get more attention. With that said, I submit to you: Dialectics , Curtis Nowosad (March 17, 2015) With Jimmy Greene, Derrick Gardner, Steve Kirby & Will Bonness I wrote the liner notes to Curtis's record because the music on the album emblematizes a trend I'd been thinking about at the time: the idea of "neo-hard bop," an obnoxiously clunky coinage I'd heard from another friend and couldn't get out of my ear. But why couldn't I get it ou...