Kevin Sun

I counted: Stevie made three jokes about blindness at Tuesday's show. I won't proceed to make one here. It's been a fine week to hear music in Boston. On Tuesday night, Stevie Wonder graced the crowd that flocked to TD Garden with his presence, performing the entirety of Songs in the Key of Life , plus the obligatory "Superstition" encore. I had already heard about the show from friends in New York and Washington D.C.; as one friend memorably noted, "How is it possible for someone to sound as good at age 64 as they did at 24?" The answer is, of course, to be Stevie Wonder. And it's true: Stevie brought the house down. Generations of Americans were dancing in the aisles to "Sir Duke" like they were hearing it for the first time, and to hear that voice ... oh, man.  During the show, though, I couldn't help but think about the readings we'd discussed in Vijay Iyer's graduate seminar earlier that day. The week's readings ...

A lot of "brilliant" in one place This past weekend, an exciting two-part series took place in New York that I unfortunately missed out on (mostly): Very Very Threadgill , a celebration of the work of Henry Threadgill curated by Jason Moran. Fortunately, I was able to hear the master himself talk about some of his work in conversation with Moran and Brent Edwards, a scholar at Columbia University currently working with Threadgill on a forthcoming memoir. Some hastily jotted notes: The Introduction of the Tuba When asked about his use of the tuba in Sextett, Threadgill averred that he'd already been thinking about and working with the tuba for some time. He mentioned the significance of X75, one of Threadgill's working band that existed in Chicago in between the more famous Air and Sextett bands, which featured six bassists, four reeds, and occasionally a vocalist or percussionist. During that time, he thought a great deal about the difference between bass an...