For those unaware, Kevin Sun is a saxophonist and composer living in New York City whose music has been called ...intense, harmonically virtuosic and compositionally complex by DownBeat Magazine, and who has released four albums to date.

Excerpt from the liner notes, by Harmony Holiday: On this album we receive a future unobstructed by any goofy or heavy handed attempts to align with futurism™ or the glories of the past. The tones go on skipping and stammering with the bright optimism of a child, a cheerfulness that is hesitant to occupy itself and sometimes abandons itself for the pensive or macabre. The cognition between the notes and compositions is vivid and tangible, a nonlinear narrative about moving through territory you were told was dangerous but are compelled to witness and overcome for yourself.

[Kevin] Sun has found the balance between the intellect, or improvisational music that teaches you how to think in new patterns, and the spirit, alighted by music that revokes your access to overthinking and forces you into a trance of the present moment. The frenzy that ensues is lighthearted and interrupted by soothe and swarm. Where I expect drama to be the driving energy of the compositions, I hear only delight, but an intense delight that I haven’t heard tonally since Clifford Jordan or Mingus. What I hear is triumph so obvious it probably frightens the composer into wondering if it’s a mirage. It is not.

This album is a secret world that any wise listener begins to feel beholden to by the final initiation as song. Great jazz music has always seduced its listeners by collapsing the distance between thought and feeling until a mood that can never be imitated outside of the universe of its players and their dynamic is formed. These worlds become ghost towns, the haunts that avid listeners tell had-to-be-there stories about to keep the circle unbroken. It is a privilege to be haunted by this exact music in this era that needs new ghosts.

CD 1:
1. Frozen in Profile (3:47)
2. Interior Choruses (3:44)
3. From Some Unseen Center (I) (2:20)
4. Elliptical Blue (2:11)
5. Ghosts of Repetition (2:55)
6. From Some Unseen Center (II) (3:08)
7. Shadow Meridian (2:46)
8. Eponymous Cycle (I) (8:54)
9. Eponymous Cycle (II) (7:20)
10. Eponymous Cycle (III) (8:12)

In loving memory of his grandfather, 孫國敏, this stunningly crafted new recording opens on the generously sculpted Frozen in Profile and the ornately seamed Interior Choruses and backs those up with the skittishly playful From Some Unseen Center (I), the diligently structured Elliptical Blue, and then we get the free-flowing Ghosts of Repetition, the perky, veritably churlish From Some Unseen Center (II), the angular balladry found within Shadow Meridian, an aching yearn then drives Eponymous Cycle, the first disc rounding out on the stoic Eponymous Cycle (II) and the more reachingly playful Eponymous Cycle (III).

CD 2:
11. Before Depths (6:19)
12. Depths I (1:28)
13. Depths II (1:46)
14. Depths III (2:59)
15. Depths IV (2:26)
16. Depths V (6:50)
17. Depths VI (5:22)
18. Depths VII (2:57)
19. After Depths (6:51)

Up next on the second disc, the two horns and a rhythm section ambiance continues onward with the forthright quilt-work of Before Depths and the impassive Depths I before they are themselves in turn followed by the high reaching funky collaboration Depths II, the early morning awakening of the human spirit felt within Depths III, the languishing Depths IV, before we are brought forth the empowered Depths V, the simply sparkling Depths VI, the recording closing on the disjointed dancefloor swirl of Depths VII and the lovingly distended After Depths.

MUSICIANS:
Kevin Sun - tenor saxophone
Adam O’Farrill (tracks 8–19) - trumpet
Dana Saul - piano
Simón Willson - bass (tracks 1-10)
Walter Stinson - bass (tracks 11-19)
Matt Honor (tracks 1–7, 11-19) - drums
Dayeon Seok (track 8–10) - drums

www.kevinsun.com

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