Kevin Sun

Charles Ives, ca. 1913 (Wikimedia Commons) Last semester, I had the pleasure of taking a semester-long survey of the life and works of Charles Ives with  John Heiss , a New England Conservatory elder statesman with an encyclopedic knowledge of Ives's music. My term paper was an 1800-word late-night ramble on Ives's idiosyncratic writing style in "Essays Before a Sonata," particularly regarding his penchant for aphorism, epigram, and apothegm. I thought I'd share it here. * * * * * Charles Ives and Aphorism “Read where you will, each sentence seems not to point to the next but to the undercurrent of all”  — Charles Ives,  Essays Before a Sonata  (xvii)             Charles Ives was a master aphorist. A skill that was possessed by a select few in the history of letters, aphorizing is a combination of wit, insight, and poetic disposition. This tendency toward aphorism and prove...

I've realized more and more the value of "unpacking" after traveling. Beyond the dirty laundry and travel-sized toiletries and the perpetually tiresome Facebook-iPhoto interface, it's like a tranche of gum after a nice meal to try to tabulate and assess what really happened, or, rather, what I think about what happened.  First, some obligatory gig photos: Night one: opening for Brian Blade Fellowship Post-opening with the compadres (l-r): Isaac Wilson, Kevin Sun, Mike Dick, Fran Vielma, Dan Raney Working on my bass clarinet posture, thinking Dolphy Band photo-op with maestro Rubén Blades Sound checking at Danilo's Saturday on the big stage, a dedicated crowd out in the rain Another view of the same, now with purple light Unconsciously assuming the Walter Smith III listening pose  ( e.g. , also this ) with guest Panamanian vocalist Brenda Lau The purpose of the trip was ostensibly education, to spread this American music...

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 ...

Ed. note (12.8.14): I realized after posting this that somehow my track listings were slightly off for the Benedetti recordings; it's "Dizzy Atmosphere (#217), not #216." Also, I've appended the analysis I wrote for class to the end of this post. I finally got around to perusing The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker  (Mosaic) after a stray comment from John McNeil reminded me that there were treasures beyond treasures waiting in this boxset. Steve Coleman analyzes a number of these tracks (the "52nd Street Theme" performances), so I thought that I'd take a look elsewhere at what Phil Schaap describes as one of the best Bird sets, period, for my midterm assignment in my Bird & Bud class: the March 31st, 1948 sets from the Three Deuces, formerly at 72 West 52nd Street in NYC.  Schaap talks at length about what makes this particularly date so special on his Bird Flight  41st Anniversary broadcast from February, 2011, but essen...