KEVIN SUN

Kevin Sun is a Brooklyn-based saxophonist, clarinetist, and improvisor-composer. As a member of the chordless collective Earprint, Kevin contributed half the compositions on their debut album, which was named #1 Debut in the 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. An album of his original music for trio, recorded in March 2017, is scheduled for release on Endectomorph Music later this year. The works on the album explore short, dense cyclical forms for improvisation, incorporating drum chants, negative harmony, serial techniques, and extreme adaptations of transcribed material from the recorded jazz canon.

Kevin was the 2013 Vandoren Emerging Artist Competition winner and the 2012 Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition winner in the jazz saxophone category. He was previously the editor of Jazz Speaks, the blog of The Jazz Gallery, a nonprofit jazz cultural center in New York City, and provides music-related grant-writing services for the Gallery and individual clients such as Ambrose Akinmusire, Shai Maestro, and David Virelles. He graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in English from Harvard College and also holds an M.M. in Jazz Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Miguel Zenón, among many others. Kevin has served as a Teaching Assistant for Vijay Iyer at Harvard University ("Music 173r: Creative Music: Critical Practice Studio," Spring 2016), and has published essays in Music & Literature online and his blog, "A Horizontal Search."

MARK BAI

Jazz pianist and composer Mark Bai is at the forefront of a new wave of musicians contributing to China's emerging jazz scene.

While Mark was working on his undergraduate degree in composition at the Nanjing University of Arts, he studied with renowned Canadian pianist David Braid. In 2005 after his graduation, Mark moved to Shanghai and soon became an integral part of the jazz scene, going on to perform and record with trumpet player Li Xiao Chun, singer Teresa Lee, and many others. He performs regularly at JZ festival in Shanghai and joined Finnish trumpet player Verneri Pohjola for a European tour in 2010. He is also the first Chinese jazz pianist who was invited for a personal jazz piano master class at the national conservatory of music in Europe (2010, Helsinki Music Academy).