Kevin Sun

[New York, NY] – On his sixth and first-ever live album, The Fate of the Tenor, saxophonist Kevin Sun showcases his working trio in their element, performing at their most electrifying for a live, dive bar audience in the industrial south Brooklyn neighborhood of Gowanus.

Recorded on the summer solstice in June 2022, The Fate of the Tenor documents Sun’s working band with bassist Walter Stinson and drummer Matt Honor–a true rarity in modern jazz–on a particularly good night during his residency at Lowlands Bar, where he has performed every Tuesday since September 2021 and continues to perform weekly in 2024. Sun had released two trio albums before, which include his 2018 debut and 2020’s (Un)seaworthy, but he wanted to capture the energy and sound of the band at their home venue, which he feels is the truest expression of their music:

“There was no setlist and no sheet music, because we had played the music so much over the past few years that we had it all memorized,” says Sun. “We had been working up to this point over hundreds of hours of rehearsing and playing, so that any one of us could just start playing with an idea and go off, go into a song, go into something else–whatever we wanted to do.”

The music on this album is not only a testament to the dedication of Sun’s ensemble, but also a reflection of the trust and goodwill of Lowlands Bar owner John Niccoli, a part-time musician himself and music enthusiast who never planned for his neighborhood dive to become a primetime venue for live jazz and other music. Bassist Stinson, who worked as a bartender there for several years before the pandemic, introduced the saxophonist to Niccoli, who gave him a monthly gig in April 2019, which re-emerged post-pandemic as a weekly gig.