Kevin Sun

In the first week of Banff, Vijay Iyer presented a list of "bad binaries," i.e. , phrases or ideas that are often placed at odds with one another, but need not necessarily be. One such false opposition of ideas that came to mind today was the pairing of "subversion" or "disruption" of tradition with rigid adherence to tradition. A distinction should be made between negative terminology like "subversion" and "disruption"—which suggests replacement, destruction of established values, and the like—and the personal search for self-expression through personal and/or increasingly novel means. Liberty Ellman gave a masterclass today in which he emphasized the historical value of a tightly knit but broadly encompassing community in jazz, noting how musicians like Bud Powell who would come to influence musicians like Monk often were influenced later by those who they influenced.  Sometimes, what comes across when somebody tries to do s

John Coltrane Portrait Painting By John F. Davis Revised 5 February 2015 (a.k.a., ii-V-I-V day): "John Coltrane on 'I Love You'" was the 15th blog post I published on A Horizontal Search , when I had just finished my first week at the 2012 Banff Summer Jazz and Creative Music Workshop  (strangely enough, my testimonial is still featured there; I still stand by what I wrote). I can't quite remember the exact circumstances, but around that I time I had just gotten back into transcribing after years of not checking out any recorded solos (I had also just started studying with Miguel Zenón at the time, not uncoincidentally). It's likely that I transcribed the solo through headphones while in transit, either on a plane or on a bus. I hadn't started using any slow-down software, either, with the rationale being that I'd transcribe now and learn later when the time came—like after graduating from college and attending musical school full-time. Now

For me, the most important lesson from my first week at Banff was learning to address music, be it jazz or otherwise, without preconceptions; put another way, I was reminded to ask myself why it was that I followed a particular convention and whether I really wanted to do so at a particular moment in time. There are some times when sticking to convention is most musical and thoughtful and best-fitting to the context, but there are many times when sticking to convention isn't even a conscious choice, as it should be. Why should there only be one soloist at a time? Do we have to start the tune with the head, or end with it always? Is the role of x or y instrument really limited to the few functions that we prescribe them?  This sort of a bottom-up approach can be daunting and exhausting at first—the act of making every musical decision a conscious one, or "justifying one's choices"—but over time, it seems that this attention to detail and specificity is what sets

Photograph of Steve Lehman by Michael Hoefner In a master class last week, Steve Lehman made an insightful distinction between "doing something that hasn't been done" versus "doing something deeply personal." Although these two things are very different, it can be easy to get stuck in the mentality of wanting to "innovate," rather than creating music that is representative of your personality, life experience, and interests in music. As I understood it, prioritizing the development of a deeply personal voice should necessarily come before the desire to innovate or change the world, since the latter often necessarily comes from the former. Developing a personal musical identity is a never-ending quest in itself, but according to Steve, the approach to doing so is pretty simple: with maximal specificity, identify precisely what elements of certain tunes, players, and recordings resonate with you, as well as those that don't, and write and p

Look, Mom: I performed with Vijay Iyer! — "What's Vijay Iyer?" Why write difficult music? A similar question came up in the first English class I took in college, which was amusingly titled "How to Scandalize Readers: Vladimir Nabokov's English Novels." In discussing novels like Lolita , Pnin , and Ada, or Ardor , the notion of hidden points of reference came up again and again—what Nabokov described in the afterward to Lolita as the " subliminal coordinates by which the novel is plotted.” For Nabokov, the subtle details that hold his novels together formally aren't necessarily the point of reading his novels, i.e. , our priority in reading his novels isn't to find these details. Instead, these subliminal coordinates provide a framework with which the novelist can operate with broad creative freedom to write works like Lolita —novels that are morally complex and layered with literary and cultural allusions, but read beautifully in them

Linoleum print of Joe Henderson by Stuart Armstrong In a previous post , I posted a transcription of Hank Mobley's solo over the Horace Silver tune "Room 608"—I also mentioned that I wasn't a huge fan of Mobley's playing. Here's a transcription of a tenor player of whom I am a huge fan: Joe Henderson's solo over the Kenny Dorham rhythm changes variant, "Straight Ahead," from Kenny Dorham's 1963 record Una Mas . This is the first commercially released recording Joe Henderson ever played on, and he sounds fully formed as a tenor stylist—greater experimentation and exploration would follow later in his career, but his mature tone and distinctive phrasing is already present on this recording. Not to say that this solo is necessarily "better" than Hank Mobley's, though, but check out the solo and the transcription for yourself:  

Jazz? Here? One of the many arts workshops offered at the Banff Centre in Alberta, CA is the " Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music ," which Vijay Iyer has called a " crucible of creativity ." He wasn't kidding—a regular day at the program entails two hours of morning ensemble rehearsal, lunch, and then three hours of masterclasses in the afternoon (plus jamming, rehearsing, hiking, etc. the rest of the time). Calling the program a "jazz workshop" might be misleading: if anything, the approaches to improvisation and composition might be best described with broader terms—sort of like how the New England Conservatory has separate departments for Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation. On the very first day, in fact, we were all encouraged by Vijay to engage in "critical practice," or to re-examine the fundamentals of what musicians do; we were encouraged to reflect on what music is, what purposes we believe it serves, a

[ed. note: updated 11/10/2017 with a reader's thoughtful comment on Mobley and others from this era] By the 1950's the bebop language had really settled into a conventional syntax that good musicians could leverage in the service of creating beautifully paced, architecturally sound improvisations. Some of the excitement of the earlier (and later) work is missing, but often times during this period the structure of jazz solos is better than that which preceded it. Mobley is prime example of this development. The use of the language itself is predictable, but the artistic results are often sublime. To this day, I have never heard a better solo on "Nica's Dream" than Mobley's on the Art Blakey record on which the composition premiered, followed by an equally exquisite Donald Byrd solo. Transparent playing that becomes utterly understandable on the written page, yet perfect. It is the same feeling I get looking at a Mozart Sonata: Everything is so simple, even

In my last post about Freddie Hubbard's solo on "Birdlike," I mentioned that he was only 23 years old at the time of the recording; coincidentally, after having just transcribed Clifford Brown's solo on another classic blues head, "Wee-Dot," from "Live at Birdland, Vol. 2," I realized that Clifford Brown was also only 23 years old at the time of this live recording. When I was in high school, I once asked my private teacher, the great pianist and composer Laurie Altman , about the attributes that great jazz solos possessed. He write down a couple on a sheet of paper, but told me that he'd bring in a recording to show me how these elements operate in practice; the next week, he brought in "Live at Birdland, Vol. 2" and played Clifford's solo for me. This solo has it all: melodic lines, strong voice-leading, inspired motific development, rhythmic interest, harmonic interest, and great time.  Take a listen (and a look!). The tr

Freddie Hubbard was 23 years old when he recorded his fourth album as a leader, "Ready for Freddie" (1961). His 19-chorus solo on "Birdlike" is a classic example of crisp, clean bebop playing; it also includes a couple instances of harmonic superimposition, but this solo is on the whole pretty straight-ahead. I haven't transcribed many trumpet players—this is my first Freddie transcription—but to me, it seems that Freddie seems to play many "saxophone-like" lines with wider intervals. At other times, there are some serpentine chromatic enclosures and approach-tone lines that are definitely more trumpet-oriented, which should be fun to translate to the tenor.  Without further ado, here's the transcription: The second chorus is pure bebop, and Freddie's breath control is just astounding.

A few highlights from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , which came highly recommended by a few graduating classmates about a week ago (relevant selling points included "most bad-ass opening line, ever," which is always a good sign): Young Hemingway looks hungry. -Hemingway's sentences -Writing about the hunger of being a young artist (and also of skipping meals and just being hungry) -A description of Wyndham Lewis as possessing the "eyes of an unsuccessful rapist" -An anecdote about reassuring F. Scott Fitzgerald about his penis size and subsequently checking said penis in a restaurant bathroom to further reassure a visibly insecure Fitzgerald Hemingway also mentions his writing process, which is characterized by both discipline and patience. He would not stop until he had finished whichever section he was working on, and also liked to think a few steps ahead: I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what wa

Last summer, I decided to make a list of weekly readings to try to tackle; I'd made summer reading lists in the past, but without the weekly structure, I usually ended up reading less than I would have liked. It's a bit of mental gimmickry to make a college-style syllabus for myself, but it works (at least for me)! So without further ado, here's what I've tentatively planned for myself for the next couple of months:

While transcribing the burning up-tempo blues head "Mr. Jekyll" from "Milestones" (1958) today, it came to my attention that, (a) "Mr. Jekyll" was a misspelling of Jackie McLean's blues head "Mr. Jackle," and (b) that Jackie Mac and Miles had recorded "Mr. Jackle" three years prior to "Milestones" on a record ambiguously named "Miles Davis and Milt Jackson: Quintet/Sextet." 1   The version on "Milestones" is the one I (and probably most people) am familiar with: The version on "Quintet/Sextet" is a bit more harmonically and melodically adventurous, not to mention significantly slower (although not any less swinging!):