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 six part "The Middle Of Tensions," the eleven section "Circle Lines," and the highlight, the forty-eight-minute, three-part "The Rigors Of Love," which takes up the entire second disc.

The cryptic titling of the pieces and Andrew Katzenstein's off-kilter but erudite and insightful liner notes—which may require multiple readings, just as the music demands multiple listenings—suggest a cerebralism to the sounds. Perhaps. But Part III of "The Rigors Of Love" (a quintet offering), which begins in a somber mood, evolves into a smile-inducing swing, as lovely as anything coming from a more mainstream frame of mind, featuring a liquid weaving of Sun's sax and Adam O'Farrill's trumpet lines, accompanied by