Kevin Sun

Joshua Foer at the Athanius Kircher Society Meeting, 2007 Joshua Foer, a young writer who also happens to be the younger brother of both novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and former New Republic editor Franklin Foer, published a book called Moonwalking with Einstein  in 2011 about studying "the art of memory," an approach to memorization that was reputedly developed by Simonides of Ceos in ancient Greece wherein one would store individualized pieces of knowledge in particular places (memory loci) within an imagined physical space (your memory palace).  The book is an easy read and isn't particularly technical, although there are some brief, interesting historical explorations and several humanistic meanderings in an attempt to answer questions Foer has about memory (in particular, there's a short discussion of epithet repetition in Homer's Odyssey  that's plenty of fun to read).  Memory has been on my mind for some time now—particularly, the benefits a

It is said that "Donna Lee" went to the grave with Bird...in 1955. I just saw an entertaining Onion-style article in The Yard, Juilliard's independent student newspaper, called " Juilliard Releases Banned Repertoire List, '12-'13 ." Of course, I thought it was real at first, but it wouldn't stretch the imagination to think of a Manhattan School of Music or Smalls-style banned repertoire list at this point. Coming up with a blacklist would probably be easiest for saxophonists: -Inner Urge (especially in 7)   -Giant Steps/Countdown/26-2 (Liberia and Satellite are cool) -Donna Lee, under any circumstances -Cherokee (no faster than a walking ballad or else as a lilting waltz) -Impressions and other uptempo modal equivalents -Yes or No (other Wayne tunes are acceptable!) And probably for everyone else, just "Take Five" and "Chameleon." Did I miss any big ones?

Over the course of the past few lessons I've had with Miguel Zenón, I've been working on memorizing John Coltrane's solo on "Crescent," from Crescent  (1964). Miguel's told me that this era of Coltrane—the increasingly exploratory stuff on Impulse! from 1962 up until some of the really outer-space stuff in '65—is his favorite because of the way Coltrane plays with the intensity of other 'free' players (Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders) while filling his phrases with a density of harmonic information that is both incredibly precise and incredibly creative. I finished learning the solo this week, which means I'll start working on memorizing "Dear Old Stockholm" from Impressions  (1963); I'll be working out a lot of the ideas in "Crescent" in the months to come, I'm sure. Here's the solo, with a few comments here and there on what Miguel and I came up with w/r/t what's going on, m/h/r:   Over the dominant cho

Things have been a bit hectic lately, so apologies for the lack of horizontal searching in the past week and a half. I thought I'd share a transcription of one of the first solos I learned in its entirety: Stan Getz on "East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)" playing duo with Kenny Barron on People Time , a live recording from the Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, March 1991.  I first started studying jazz after hearing Stan Getz's unreal sound on "The Girl from Ipanema," which I still think is one of the definitive and inimitable saxophone sounds of all time (I actually couldn't listen to Coltrane or Dexter Gordon for the first few years I began learning to play—I liked Getz's sound too much to divert much attention to other approaches). This particular recording is Getz's last recording, made three months before he passed away, and his playing is deep: his sound is more raw than in the live recordings in the years before this final record ( Anni