Kevin Sun

When Lennie wrote that line ["Lennie Bird"], he had no regard for a horn player's need to take a breath once in a while. That was the same problem with Lennie's line on "See You In My Dreams," where the last 16 bars had no space whatsoever for a breath. When Warne and I played that, we worked it out so I would omit a couple notes in one place and he would do the same in another place so we could each grab a quick breath, but there would never be a break in the sound. But with just one horn that is tough.    — Ted Brown   Bb C Eb * Back in the day, I used to be able to get through this solo passably. * * * * * So many things started, then life gets in the way. In a moment of unchecked nostalgia, I came upon some videos of myself playing solos I'd learned and since mostly forgotten, and I realized I'd never gotten around to posting the transcriptions of some of those solos (hence, this post). Most of it was just dropping ...

Mark Turner in full "jackhammer" at The Jazz Gallery (YouTube screen-capture via Radhika Philip ) Drummer Johnathan Blake leads a powerhouse chordless quartet featuring tenor saxophonists Mark Turner and Chris Potter, with Ben Street on bass. The band has released one album, Gone, But Not Forgotten  (Criss Cross, 2014), and most recently performed last weekend at Newport. I caught the band live at the Jazz Standard back in May, but unfortunately missed them when they performed at The Jazz Gallery at the very start of my senior year of college. Radhika Philip , author of the invaluable Being Here , a collection of recent interviews with leading creative improvisors on the New York scene, captured this video from the show, which has since been watched over 25,000, a pretty respectable number of eyeballs for the jazz web. Through the shadowy jazz bootleg network, I managed to get a rendition of "Along Came Betty," whose richly chromatic harmonic scheme is a mor...

Nested brackets and jazz tune titles — vestiges of jazz camp I spent all of last week at Ravinia's Steans (pronounced 'STAINS') Music Institute for their annual summer jazz program . Ravinia is a wooded, Shire-like area about 40 minutes north of Chicago by car, and the festival there hosts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra each year (someone explained Ravinia to me as "Chicago's Tanglewood"). The Steans Institute hosts several residencies each year for jazz and classical musicians to come together and produce or refine work intensely. Dr. David Baker's long been at the helm of the program for jazz, which grants the lucky participants access to the hall of baby grand pianos and rehearsal spaces at the building, but this year the faculty included pianist Billy Childs, saxophonist Nathan Davis, and bassist Rufus Reid.  The ages ranged from 17 (!) to 30s, although the median age I'd guess would be somewhere around early-mid 20s, and I was amused to fin...