Saxophonist/composer Kevin Sun looks beyond the constant disruptions of daily life on ambitious and transportive new double album

The Depths of Memory, due out on October 27, 2023 via Endectomorph Music under exclusive license to la reserve, features Sun’s core collaborators Adam O’Farrill, Dana Saul, Walter Stinson, Matt Honor, Simón Wilson, and Dayeon Seok.

The album’s first half, From All This Stillness, is a digital-only release (July 7, 2023), with the second half, The Depths in Slow Motion, to be released October 27 with the physical double album.

“Kevin Sun is well on his way toward staking a major claim as a distinctive composer and soloist... [with] a formidable compositional apparatus but a strikingly accessible sound.”
– Troy Dostert, All About Jazz 

" [Kevin Sun is] clearly a player who sees the big picture and his evolving place within it." 
– David R. Adler, New York City Jazz Record
 

Losing nearly two years of gigs was undoubtedly a challenge for every working musician. But saxophonist/composerKevin Sunchose to take the opportunity provided by the lockdown to recontextualize his always ambitious music, composing a set of material more appropriate to focused listening than to the convivial distractions of the jazz club.

The Depths of Memory, due outOctober 27, 2023via Sun’s ownEndectomorph Musicunder exclusive license to la reserve, isn’t a “pandemic record” in the way that term has quickly come to be defined. It’s not a makeshift solo outing or a dream project facilitated by a group of all-stars suddenly finding their calendars wide open. Instead, it’s an ambitious and exploratory set of music that takes vivid inspiration from the shift in perspective imposed by these recent unprecedented experiences. 

“I wanted the feeling of being swept along on a current of musical thought over a long period of time,” Sun explains. “I was hoping to capture that relatively rare feeling of just taking a long walk when it's nice out, looking at leaves and trees, feeling the wind. It should be a transporting experience as opposed to the more normal daily experience, where we live with a virtual world full of constant interruptions, disruptions, and notifications.”

The double album features Sun’s regular collaborators including trumpeterAdam O’Farrill, pianistDana Saul, and two equally daring rhythm sections: bassistWalter Stinsonand drummerMatt Honor, longtime compatriots who have appeared on each of the saxophonist’s four previous releases; alternating with bassistSimón Wilsonand drummerDayeon Seok. While it spans nearly ninety minutes,From All This Stillnessis relatively concise next to Sun’s previous double album, 2019’sThe Sustain of Memory, which featured the same cast of collaborators but ran almost half an hour longer. 

That was intentional, Sun says. The composer focused on paring each piece down to its essential elements, allowing his gifted bandmates to express themselves as much as possible. “I wanted to improve upon the longer pieces I've written by condensing everything to make the music feel more immediate,” he says. “I wanted to allow my friends and collaborators to just dive in and immediately start painting the canvas. So I was relatively specific with the musical material, but tried not to have it be restrictively demanding.”

That was another urgency inadvertently born of the pandemic – an impatience to get back to collaboration after such an arduous time apart. You can feel that in the abrupt, almost in media res opening of “Frozen in Profile,” which foregoes any sort of melodic statement to kick off the album at a gallop. “Interior Choruses” follows, again arriving at the point quickly with an elusive, intense piano solo over a stealthy, odd-metered bassline, eventually bursting free into the blues feel of Sun’s solo. “Ghosts of Repetition” is a parallel piece, which its spectral repetitions and echoes.

The album includes two drastically different takes of “From Some Unseen Center,” the more abstract, cascading first version contrasted by the more insinuating, hypnotic second. “Elliptical Blue” swaggers with a slow, lurching swing, while “Shadow Meridian” closes the quartet section of the album with an ethereal almost-ballad.

Two thirds ofFrom All This Stillnessis taken up by a pair of multi-section suites: the three-part “Eponymous Cycle” and the nine-part “Depths.” The Willson/Seok rhythm section steps in, along with O’Farrill, for “Eponymous Cycle,” was inspired by a live 1950 Charlie Parker recording featuring an extended solo over the changes of “Fine and Dandy.” As on his previous album<3 Bird, Sun extrapolated the raw material of Bird’s solo, expanding on and reimagining it for his own ensemble. Stinson and Honor rejoin in a quintet line-up for “Depths,” a series of miniatures that set unique challenges for these longtime collaborators. 

Given the evidence of previous releases, Sun has never seemed the type of composer who places limitations on his expansive imagination. Practical considerations do tend to intrude under normal circumstances, though – not least the usual life of a working jazz musician in New York City, something that he was able to look beyond in this rare instance.

“Most of the gigs I play are in bars and clubs,” Sun says. “That's just the life unless you're a famous touring musician playing big festivals and halls. I wanted to take advantage of this recording to release something that would be pretty impractical on a day-to-day performing level. What I really wanted to do was get together with my friends and play, but we couldn't do that. So my imagination ran wild.”

Kevin Sun
Kevin Sun is a saxophonist and composer living in New York City whose music has been called, “intense, harmonically virtuosic and compositionally complex" byDownBeatMagazine. Sun has released four previous albums, all on his own Endectomorph label:Trio(2018), with Walter Stinson and Matt Honor;The Sustain of Memory(2019);(Un)seaworthy(2020); and most recently<3 BIRDin August 2021, which landed on the Boston Globe's "60 best albums of the year." He has also recorded four albums with the ensembles Mute, Earprint, and Great On Paper, and he appears on recordings led by Jacob Garchik, Dana Saul, and Xiongguan Zhang. In addition to performing in the U.S., Sun has performed extensively in China and has served as the Artistic Director of the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra. In 2021, Sun was named a Finalist for the Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellowship.
 

Kevin Sun – The Depths of Memory
Endectomorph Music – EMM-015 – Recorded May 12 and Dec. 15, 2021; and May 26, 2022
Release date October 27, 2023

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