Saxophonist Kevin Sun brings his NYC-based quartet on the road in support of his latest album, Quartets, released on Endectomorph Music. The quartet features his longtime collaborators pianist Christian Li (Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Sungazer), bassist Walter Stinson (Adam O’Farrill’s Stranger Days, Onyx Collective), and drummer Kayvon Gordon (Sullivan Fortner Trio).

The band will be performing a mix of newer compositions workshopped during Sun’s longstanding residency at Lowlands Bar in Brooklyn and revisiting music from his new release, Quartets, which presents his original work from the past decade in New York.

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"The saxophonist Kevin Sun has been making his mark on the New York scene of late by way of studiousness and subtlety ... Sun has something original going on, too: his own feeling of loose coil and terse freedom, and a personal approach to disrupting time." – New York Times

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Kevin Sun is a saxophonist and composer living in New York City. His music has been called “…intense, harmonically virtuosic and compositionally complex” by DownBeat magazine, and he has released seven albums as a leader (most recently, Quartets). Sun has also released five albums with the cooperative bands Mute, Earprint, and Great On Paper, and he appears on recordings led by Adam O’Farrill, Jacob Garchik, Juanma Trujillo, Dana Saul, and Xiongguan Zhang. In addition to performing in the United States, Sun has performed extensively in China and previously served as the artistic director of the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra (BNCJO) from 2018 until 2020, leading performances of the BNCJO at the Blue Note Beijing with guest artists such as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kris Davis, and Ingrid Jensen. He performs regularly at Lowlands Bar in Brooklyn, where he has been in residence since 2021 with support from Keyed Up!, a program of the nonprofit organization Jazz Generation. In 2021, Sun was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellowship. He plays VENN reeds by D’Addario exclusively.

Christian Li is a pianist, composer, and arranger based in New York City. He plays with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Sungazer, Childish Japes, Mike Bono, Shubh Saran, and others. Li is on faculty at Berklee College of Music.

Walter Stinson is a bassist, composer, and educator who has been performing and living in Brooklyn since 2012 after graduating from Purchase College. He began his music studies at the age of 10 by playing along with the classic country radio station and his mother, who was a jazz pianist. Growing up in Ithaca, NY, he was incredibly fortunate to study with a couple of unsung heroes of the NYC jazz scene: bassist Bernie Upson and drummer George Reed. He has also had the privilege of studying with a number of contemporary greats, including John Clayton, Nicholas Walker, Doug Weiss, Kermit Driscoll, Scott Colley, Larry Grenadier, William Parker, and Stephan Crump. He performs regularly with Adam O'Farrill, Dierk Peters, Onyx Collective, and many other brilliant artists.

Kayvon Gordon was born and raised in Detroit. Starting at a young age, he was mentored by legendary trumpeter Marcus Belgrave. Later, he studied at the University of Michigan with Robert Hurst and Benny Green. Gordon has performed in Europe, Africa, South Asia, the United Arab Emirates, and North America. He has had the honor of sharing the stage with Belgrave, Joe Lovano, Johnny O’Neal, Robert Hurst, Rodney Whitaker, Ravi Coltrane, JD Allen, and Wynton Marsalis. Kayvon Gordon seeks to contribute to the forward-thinking aesthetic of his contemporaries while honoring the rich musical legacy of Detroit.