Kevin Sun

Throwback to #tbt: the pre-2015 listicle A brief listening playlist I assembled was published in the November/December 2016 issue of JAZZed Magazine . Thanks to Ann Braithwaite for recommending me to the editor. The listicle is ostensibly in support of the recent Earprint  album release , but it was nice to have a chance to share some thoughts about music I've been checking out lately, particularly some inspiring contemporaries like saxophonist-composers  Anna Webber and Ben van Gelder , both of whom have recently released mesmerizing albums (buy them: Binary  and Among Verticals , respectively, although the latter is technically not yet officially out).  The PDF spread is available here ; full, searchable text below for particularly inquisitive readers and the algorithmic webcrawlers out there on SEO duty. * * * * * What's On Your Playlist? ( JAZZed , Nov/Dec 2016) Biographical sketch by Christian Wissmuller Kevin Sun is an accomplished saxophonist...

It's been a pleasure working on and witnessing the Creative Music Convergences curated by Vijay Iyer at Harvard yesterday and today, April 7th and 8th, 2016. I put some program notes together for these two evenings of creative music, herewith: Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith Vijay Iyer’s introduction to Wadada Leo Smith’s music came in the early 1990s after Iyer read an interview with saxophonist-composer Anthony Braxton, wherein he spoke of Smith “in the most superlative terms possible.” This led to Iyer’s picking up Th e Flam (1975, Black Saint) by saxophonist Frank Lowe, featuring Smith on trumpet in a chordless quintet setting alongside saxophone, trombone, bass, and drums. Smith’s playing, distinguished by his attention to space and silence and by his relational conception of ensemble sound, was revelatory. “I heard great silences, toneless columns of air, long tones that cut diagonally across the hubbub of the ensemble,” Iyer recalled in...

Yawning blankness (Wikimedia Commons) A few days ago I visited a friend I hadn't seen in nearly a year at his studio apartment in Manhattan. I mentioned to him how I'd like to furnish a place of my own in the future like his: stacks of books, some CDs, a stereo, a desk, and a bed. He replied, "Yeah, most of this furniture is my mom's," which was when I realized we were talking about two different things: the functional, essential trappings of a place, and the contents of a place that you bring to it to define a space. In college, I remember having my mind mildly blown—puffed?—when a graduate English student shared this factoid, which I haven't verified but like to believe is true: that stanza  in the Italian means "room." It's one of those nice, evocative factoids that resonates on its own: that moving through a poem is like moving through a series of distinct but connected spaces. There are single-unit poems, like studio apartments, ...

Two years ago, I wrote a short entry about vibing on this blog after hearing some stories shared at Harvard by Greg Osby and Joe Lovano about their experiences as young students of the music. Today is International Jazz Day, so I thought I'd break the radio silence on this blog by sharing an excerpt from my senior thesis, which is a collection of nonfiction essays about my experiences learning how to improvise and exploring the New York jazz scene these past few summers. This essayette is called "Vibe." Hope you enjoy. “Vibe” 1. vibe ( va ɪ b), v. a.  To make oneself averse or hostile to another person (usually through body language, tone, indirect signification) ; to give negative vibes, so as to signal disapproval: "That motherfucker was vibing me so hard after I lost the form on that last tune. Smalls sucks.” derivatives vibey (va ɪ b- ē ), adj. a. Possessing an unwelcoming or negative vibe; actively vibin...

Last year, a friend of mine introduced me to the term "mo-jazz," a.k.a. , modern jazz. We were playing an uptempo tune he'd transcribed called "Time to Spare," which was written by saxophonist Brice Winston who's most recently been playing with Terence Blanchard's band. He included a little thumbnail of Justin Brown's face in the corner of the leadsheet as a joke; it was supposed to inspire us and remind us of the unabashedly youthful and contemporary vibe that "mo-jazz," either as a pejorative or as a sincere descriptor, embodied.  Even though "mo-jazz" was just a joke, there was something to it—the idea of a shared aesthetic that's been spreading through jazz schools and also through regional scenes in general. I noticed it in the records my friends were listening to, many of whom had overlapping personnel: Ambrose, Gerald Clayton, Walter Smith III, Taylor Eigsti, Aaron Parks, Mike Moreno, and so forth. I also heard it in...