Kevin Sun

KS: It's been a month since the release of The Fate of the Tenor , and I've been really happy with the response from listeners and friends who had a chance to listen. On that note, I'd like to share a guest post that my dear friend Juanma Trujillo graciously put together for the occasion, which describes his approach and thought process regarding the live recording. Juanma and I have worked together for years not only as performers, but also on the actual recording, mixing, and production of a number of my releases.  * * * * * The Fate Of The Tenor – A Technical Addendum  By Juanma Trujillo By the time Kevin reached out to me to record this album, I had already sold and shipped out a lot of my gear as I was moving out of the US. I had my two nicest ribbon mics, and Kevin had a few mics of his own that we used. Some of the other mics were sourced among our community of musician friends and engineers (a detailed list is provided with the liner notes ). Everything was recorde...

I met and played with pianist Christian Li for the first time this spring after hearing a lot about his protean, Paul Bley-influenced pianism from friends. One of the youngest instructors on the piano faculty at Berklee , Christian was actually directly responsible for my spontaneously returning to Beijing for two months back in May (semi-long story, no need to digress here).  We ended up overlapping in Beijing for two weeks in June and got to play a number of gigs with local musicians ( links to videos at the end of this post), and we spoke about the possibility of reviving my blog's guest post series. Herewith, Christian shares some thoughts on incorporating Messiaen's harmonic vocabulary into improvisation. * * * * * Brief Notes on Messiaen's " Apparition du Christ glorieux" (from  Éclairs sur l'au-delà... ) By Christian Li Olivier Messiaen ca. 1930 (public domain) I’ve always been attracted to Messiaen’s harmony. I love the refractive c...

Check out this guest post on the nuts and bolts of planning, recording, designing, and releasing your debut record! It's written by my good friend, drummer, and trivia-master Curtis Nowosad, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada.             My name’s Curtis Nowosad and I'm a drummer from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. I recently released my debut album, The Skeptic & the Cynic , and Kevin asked me to write a post about what exactly it is that goes into the recording of an album and putting out your record.             Intro           In the broadest terms, you need three things: time, money, and music. No matter how much you plan, you’ll likely get run into problems that will delay the progress of your project (more on that later). For me personally, the entire process—from the decision to record to the album release—took almost one year to the day. As I star...

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a guest post! Enjoy pianist Malcolm Campbell on Papo Lucca's approach to montuno playing . Papo Lucca, smiling Puerto Rican pianist Papo Lucca is one of the great salsa pianists of all time.   His father Quique Lucca started the band Sonora Ponceña in 1954, and Papo has directed it for the past 40 years or so.  I transcribed five of his montunos from Explorando, one of my favorite Sonora Ponceña albums, from 1978.  Papo Lucca was 32 at the time. More so than in jazz, the pianist in salsa music is central to the rhythmic drive of the band.  Since the percussion is spread out over a whole section of people, the pianist is much more akin to a jazz drummer in terms of the personal responsibility he has for the groove.  On top of this, he is also the primary (sometimes the only) chordal instrument. Papo basically has three modes of playing on this album: arranged hits, montuno, and...

Here's a guest post by trumpeter Josh Shpak on a few concepts he's developed to make the jam session experience more musically satisfying. Enjoy! First off, I’d like to thank my good friend Kevin for inviting me to present this guest blog post.  I’ll use this opportunity to convey my thoughts on something that has become a significant (and somewhat precarious) part of the life that I—and most people who call themselves jazz musicians—lead.  I’m talking about jam sessions. First off, let me introduce myself: my name is Josh Shpak and I’m a 19 year-old trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader entering my 2 nd year at Berklee College of Music. I recently finished a summer semester at Berklee; during that time, I played a good amount at Wally’s Jazz Café. Wally’s has really been the foundation of my opinions on jam sessions and I’ve found that one can find the whole spectrum of musicianship in this little Boston dive—from the beginning jazz players to ...

Check out this Joe Henderson transcription I did for the guys over at "So Killing, Man."  The site is "dedicated to the study of improvisational music through transcription and analysis," according to their banner, and there are plenty of great solos posted, including Ambrose's introduction to " Confessions to My Unborn Daughter. "  Since school is starting up this Tuesday, expect fewer posts between now and mid-December; I'll keep posting transcriptions periodically, though (probably once a week), and other miscellaneous content as it comes. 

Here's a guest post by composer, percussionist, writer, and resident music omnivore Kevin Laskey (Princeton '12). Enjoy the recommendations and check out his other writings on music at his website ! People like to talk about how “crossover” is the big new thing in jazz right now. But in reality, “crossover” – especially with European classical music – has been part of the jazz vocabulary since, well, the term jazz was invented. Scott Joplin was classically trained and notated all his music. Then there was George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody and Blue” written for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Then Duke Ellington made the Nutcracker and Peer Gynt swing. Then there was all of that Third Stream mumbo-jumbo in the ’,50s and ’60s with Gunther Schuller and George Russell… Well, it’s pretty clear that jazz-classical crossover music is hardly a new phenomenon. But I will say that there hasn’t been such a conducive environment for it as there is now. With more and players versed in both ...

The first guest post for this blog! The inimitable conductor-composer-poet-librettist-rock-star Matthew Aucoin '12 offers up a couple excellent listening recommendations. Thanks to Kevin for inviting me to post. At the moment, I conduct and compose more than I play jazz piano (I played mostly jazz in high school), but I still consider myself a jazz musician at heart, and I’m excited to share some favorite “classical” composers (I’m not a fan of the term) that I think will appeal to jazz musicians and aficionados. What I gained from my years playing jazz is, above all, a deeper understanding of rhythm, a deeper connection to pulse, and a phobia of rhythmic laziness. The lack of attention to rhythm -- to the development of an inescapable inner pulse and a careful study of what feels good -- is, to my mind, the greatest failure of mainstream classical training. Rhythmic flexibility is one of good classical musicians’ strongest assets, but it must arise out of a de...