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Jazz Articles about Simón Willson
Ethan Iverson: Technically Acceptable
by Mike Jurkovic
The funhouse genius of pianist Ethan Iverson hits full nor'easter with Technically Accepted, an album so loaded with invention and cool it rises instantly to the pack of hands-down favorites for the still unformed year of 2024. Unbounded, Iverson's many quirks and instigations hurl madly around the house, the studio, the bodega down the street and it is up to the rest of us to keep up. That includes his two simpatico rhythm sections: bassist Thomas Morgan and ...
Continue ReadingKevin Sun: The Depths of Memory
by Dan McClenaghan
Saxophonist/composer Kevin Sun's 2 CD set, The Depths Of Memory, is said to be more suited to focused listening than to the “convivial distractions of a jazz club." That rings true. From CD 1's opener, “All This Stillness," subdivided into seven sections, the album finds the saxophonist and his bandmates sounding as if they have slipped into a flow. Sun says he wanted the feeling of “being swept along in a current of musical thought over a period of time." ...
Continue ReadingFamily Plan: Family Plan
by Jerome Wilson
Family Plan belongs to the strain of piano trios, formed in the wake of The Bad Plus, that eschew a straight acoustic jazz approach in favor of music which often experiments with distortion, repetition and knotty, mechanical melodies, all of which display the close-knit interaction between the three group members, pianist Andrew Boudreau, bassist Simon Willson, and drummer Vincente Hansen. The resemblance to The Bad Plus shows up most in the bumpy prog rock motion of “Life Is ...
Continue ReadingFamily Plan: Family Plan
by Troy Dostert
Listeners familiar with saxophonist Kevin Sun's adventurous outings on his Endectomorph label—The Sustain of Memory, 2019; (Un)Seaworthy, 2020—will celebrate the fact that he is now reaching out to other like-minded musicians for inclusion on his roster. One of the first, Family Plan, is a trio built around the talents of pianist-keyboardist Andrew Boudreau, bassist Simón Willson, and drummer Vicente Hansen. The group treads the fine line between form and freedom quite skillfully, with occasional electronic touches which add dimension to ...
Continue ReadingKevin Sun: The Sustain of Memory
by Neri Pollastri
Il secondo album da leader del trentenne sassofonista e clarinettista newyorchese Kevin Sun è un'opera lunga, due CD, e complessa, articolata su tre suite diverse per organico e clima. La prima suite—"The Middle of Tension," in sei parti per un totale di trentasei minuti—vede di scena un classico quartetto, nel quale Sun è accompagnato dal pianoforte di Dana Saul, dal contrabbasso di Walter Stinton e dalla batteria di Matt Honor. Ed è il pianoforte, con la frammentarietà e ...
Continue ReadingKasperi Sarikoski: Three Plus One
by Friedrich Kunzmann
The trombone seems to be going through somewhat of a renaissance in 2020. That's only if a period when albums such as Grachan Moncur III's Some Other Stuff (Blue Note, 1965) were released can be considered the instrument's heyday in jazz. But fresh Norwegian input--captured on Oyvind Braekke's sextet release Wilderness (Oslo Recording Sessions, 2020)--graced the early spring of 2020, and New York-based trombonist Nick Finzer followed with a similar sextet concept, revealing another highlight of the year in the ...
Continue ReadingKevin Sun: The Sustain of Memory
by Dan McClenaghan
Ambition is good. Saxophonist Kevin Sun has it. He proves it by releasing--before attaining his thirtieth birthday--The Sustain of Memory, a cinematic two-disc set of atmospheric avant-garde music in trio, quartet and quintet settings, which maintains a start-to-finish focus of an expansive artistic vision. “I've always been drawn to sprawling, encyclopedic or maximalist works of art," Sun says. And he has produced an excellent and beautiful example of the genre. The music is divided into three “suites": the ...
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