Kevin Sun

Continuing the beginning of the year effort to unload old transcriptions and such, here's another immortal declamation from Bird: "Groovin' High," from  Diz 'n' Bird , live at Carnegie Hall in 1947. Like  "Confirmation"  from the same performance, "Groovin' High" appears in  Steve Coleman's essential  The Dozens  essay on Bird : Parker's incredible time feel is on display from the moment he takes his break. He swings hard, even more evident here because during these four measures he is playing unaccompanied. The song begins in Eb major, but just before Bird's solo the music modulates during an interlude to Db major, then, after a second interlude, back again to Eb major for Dizzy's solo. Yard's solo break contains a classic example of what I call cutting corners, where Bird takes this one path, then, beginning with his characteristic rhythmic vocal-like sigh just after the 8th beat of the break, moves briefly i

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

With digital technology comes the luxury of easily being able to listen without interruption to a series of interpretations of the same standard. This was a feature of iTunes that I'd been aware of but had never really exploited until fairly recently. Aside from learning tunes and checking out what changes different players used, I hadn't done it strictly for the pleasure of listening—for the pleasure of hearing the same song being worked through in different keys, tempi, etc .  Two solos on "Star Eyes" stood out especially when I was playing this game once: young Miles's with Bird from 1951, and a Bill Evans trio version with Eddie Gomez and Shelly Manne from the mid-'60s. Like the "Now's the Time" solo that Red Garland quotes in block chords on "Straight, No Chaser" on Milestones, Miles's "Star Eyes" solo has an eminently singable quality that makes it a real earworm; Bill's solo is more ornate and features tho

I honestly can't recall who turned me on to Lee Konitz's landmark Live at the Half Note  (1959) , but I just remember it being referred to as "that record of Lennie Tristano's quintet with Jimmy Garrison and Paul Motian, plus Bill Evans subbing on piano." I was instantly sold. I wrote a bit about this record a year and a half ago, right when I had just started my tenure as the editor of Jazz Speaks , concerning the arranged counterpoint on "Scrapple for the Apple."   The story goes that Lennie reserved Tuesday nights for teaching, so Warne and Lee recruited Evans to join them. He comps very little, but his solo statements are pristine. Check it out: C Bb Eb * * * * * I haven't given this much thought, but I instinctively prefer this earlier Bill Evans to some of the later trio work, although I haven't really perused his discography in any serious way. Last semester, I played a concert with the NEC big band that

Donald Barthelme (Wikimedia Commons) After a friend lent me his copy of Donald Barthelme's Sixty Stories  a few weeks ago, I've been hooked. I'd known about Barthelme for some time, having read "The Balloon" after David Foster Wallace mentioned it in an interview as the first piece of fiction that really "rang his cherries." That was the only piece of Barthelme's I'd read and, at the time, I was relatively unimpressed. As a long-time fan of Thomas Pynchon, I'd also known about Barthelme as a kind of American postmodernist counterweight to Pynchon's urban sprawl: Barthelme as the enigmatic purveyor of fragments and pocket-sized fictions, polished to an extreme and sharing the same compact muscularity as Hemingway's writing.  A native Texan and son of a famous architect (in whose shadow the younger Donald Barthelme would bide for years), Barthelme was enthralled by jazz at a young age. In a superb 1981 interview for The Paris R

Woody Shaw in '78 (Wikimedia Commons) Woody Shaw trades a heroic number of choruses with Louis Hayes on this December 1976 live date at the Vanguard. Homecoming  was released under Dexter Gordon's name, but it's really the Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes band of the late '70s with Dexter as the hallowed, repatriated guest of honor. With Ronnie Mathews on piano and Stafford James on bass to round out the rhythm section, it's the direct continuation of the '50s-'60s hard bop sound that became bizarrely eclipsed in the '80s by the Young Lions—the shadow of a generation's own creation. Having not lived through that era, whose narrative is still being told and retold (DTM reference here ), that whole episode in history is still and might forever remain murky to me, but it's thrilling to hear mainstream swinging jazz at its peak in the '70s, as on this recording.  Aside from the obvious command (some might say domination) of the instrument, Shaw

Another one from the archives: Trane's measured, exceedingly lucid solo on "Dear Old Stockholm" from a studio session in April 1963 that features Roy Haynes filling in for Elvin. Miguel assigned this solo for its rhythmic and harmonic simplicity and motivic logic, a model of tension and release without unnecessary harmonic substitutions and other filigree. The harmonic and melodic material Coltrane works with throughout the improvisation remain relatively limited; it's in the play of small ideas and his rhythmic elaborations that the musical narrative unfolds.  McCoy lays out for most of Trane's solo here, which brings Roy's mesmerizing comping to the foreground; maybe I'll be able to transcribe some of the snare and bass drum comping one day, but for now I'll leave that to another enterprising student of the music.  C Bb Eb * * * * * Francis Davis's liner notes to Newport '63  offer more insight into the re

In years past I've always said that the next year will be the year that I post fewer transcriptions and post more critical thoughts on music, culture—that sort of thing. Having stepped down as editor of Jazz Speaks  officially starting this month, I'm looking forward to having more time to reflect and write, but I thought it'd be good to air out the cobwebs to ensure a good start to the year. I've been sitting on a whole bunch of transcriptions that I've (a) started, (b) finished, or (c) forgotten about.  To kick things off, here's Joe Henderson, age 26, on Lee Morgan's catchy theme "Hocus-Pocus," too swaggering to be even close to corny. I've had a similar thought about quintessentially hard bop takes—like the horn solis on Eddie Harris's "Love for Sale" from The In Sound  (1966)—that goes something like this: it's hard to imagine many music school-aged players writing lines like this for fear of coming across as dusty, o