Kevin Sun

www.jazzspeaks.org As Keith Jarrett averred in an interview with Ethan Iverson, " I hate reading other people’s interviews, because I don’t want them to be boring, but they’re never filled with much at all." The art of interviewing is not easy, and it's something I learned a great deal about and gained a great deal of respect for the summer after my freshman year of college, when I worked on the Leonard Lopate Show at WNYC. At the end of that summer, I thought at the time that I would never do another interview ever again, but then The Crimson came along and then, after that, Jazz Speaks , The Jazz Gallery's blog. Leonard's brand of live, unedited interviewing is especially remarkable, but I've also always been partial to Terry Gross on WHYY's Fresh Air.   I'll say this glibly because it's true: I can't believe it's already been a year. It seems like just yesterday that I was buying economy packages of bottled water at Duane R

It's slowly dawned on me that having a personal relationship with your musical heroes is one of the defining characteristics of great improvisors in the jazz tradition. That is, developing your own vocabulary to describe how an influential artists sounds to you and exploring the implications of that vocabulary leads you past simple imitation and toward sounds that you can identify as your own. I noticed this last year listening to the way Vijay Iyer described how Monk's piano playing sounded to him, which interrogated and eschewed hand-me-down conceptions of Monk's playing and replaced those with a more rigorous, more passionately derived conception of the artist's sonic profile (check out Iyer's "Ode to a Sphere" for a sense of this one-to-one relationship).  Steve Coleman's relationship to Bird is another one of those exemplary one-to-one relationships. His seminal essay on Bird for The Dozens offers a glimpse into Coleman's unique, influent

Perhaps a somewhat unlikely trio In the past week, I've come across three interviews where artists from vastly different  experiences have shared wisdom on topics that I've been reflecting on lately. Rehearsing, workshopping, and philosophy of performance have all been on my mind.  What's the best way to refine a composition? What do I see myself moving toward when performing? How should I collaborate with others on creative work?  I thought I'd share what I came across: Shai Maestro: On Overcomposing I got a bit tired of this process where you go on stage, play a beautiful, well-executed song, have people clap, and then head on home. I’m searching for an experience that is more in tune with Wayne Shorter’s world. Where he is coming from, just exploring the unknown, it’s about being open to the moment—open to not even playing the composition.”  — Jazz Speaks (interview by Harrison Wood) Keith Jarrett: On Personal Voice What happens is, your voice isn’t

The first saxophone that I learned to play on was a Chinese alto saxophone that cost around the ballpark of a couple of hundred dollars US. It had Tai Shan  engraved on the bell, most likely referring to the famous mountain , and it took me a few years to realize that the entire left hand spatula set-up was completely defective: there was no way to close the low B or Bb keys, which was why I always had so much trouble with the low notes.  My parents bought the saxophone for me on a trip to Beijing, but I hadn't checked out any jazz in the city until these past two weeks, when I went on a short family vacation. New York-based saxophone player Sean Nowell put me in contact with a few musicians behind the Great Firewall, and vocalist Jess Meider tipped me off to all the places I ended up checking out in Beijing. Here's what I saw: 江湖 Jiang Hu Bar This is a venue that features all sorts of music, but Tuesday nights are the jazz jam session. That night, the set list w