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Winner of the Kennedy Center's Mary Lou Williams Piano Competition, pianist Helen Sung has been called "one of the brightest emerging stars in jazz today". As an Asian-American artist and composer, she challenges stereotypes with a compelling, unique voice informed by her virtuosity in classical, jazz, & popular music.

Her CD Helenistique was praised as "...one of the year’s most exciting listens." (JazzTimes), and her latest release Sungbird after Albéniz, a jazz-classical adventure, is being hailed "a real winner" (All About Jazz - Los Angeles), a "seamless recording in which one composer’s contributions complement the other’s." (BillBoard). Most recently, her project NuGenerations was selected as a 2009 US State Department-Rhythm Road ensemble and will tour Africa as musical ambassadors.

A native of Houston, Texas, Sung attended its High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). She initially aspired to be a classical pianist but was bitten by the jazz bug (specifically by Tommy Flanagan's solo on Charlie Parker's Confirmation) while studying at at the University of Texas at Austin. She switched to jazz and was soon after accepted into the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (@ the New England Conservatory in Boston).

An intensive program accepting only seven students, it proved to be an unprecedented opportunity to study & perform with some of the greatest masters of jazz music. The septet performed with Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy Heath, Jackie McLean, Bobby Watson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and James Moody; and studied with such artists as Ron Carter (artistic director of the program), Barry Harris, David Baker, Slide Hampton, Lewis Nash, Jon Faddis, Curtis Fuller, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Bennie Maupin, and Sir Roland Hanna. They performed at Kennedy Center and toured India and Thailand with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. Personal highlights of Sung's time in Boston include presenting a jazz workshop with the late, acclaimed bassist Ray Brown, performing at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and feature television spots. She also taught a group piano class for low-income elderly adults sponsored by New England Conservatory’s Continuing Education Program & the YMCA.

Helen presently lives in New York City, and has gone on to work with such jazz masters as Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, Buster Williams, Wayne Shorter, Steve Turre, Steve Wilson, T.S.Monk, and MacArthur Fellow Regina Carter. She appears frequently with the Mingus Big Band and is a current member of Clark Terry’s "Big Badd" Big Band. She was also a featured performer on PBS' In Performance at the White House for the Monk Institute?s 20th Anniversary Celebration.

Sung is also a budding bandleader and has been featured on Marian McPartland’s acclaimed Piano Jazz show, NPR’s JazzSet w/DeeDee Bridgewater, and XM Radio’s In the Swing Seat w/Wynton Marsalis. She has feature print pieces in such publications as Keyboard, Downbeat, JazzTimes, JazzIz, and AllAboutJazz. Sung's band has headlined at the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival, Fontana Chamber Arts Summer Festival, Clifford Brown Jazz Festival, Jazz Lucca Donna Festival (Italy), Kalisz International Jazz Piano Festival (Poland), Bern Jazz Festival, Tri-C Jazz Festival (Cleveland), Vermont Mozart Festival, the American Jazz Museum’s Blue Room, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and New York City’s finest jazz venues.

Her experience at the Monk Institute inspires her to remain involved with music education by working arts organizations (such as JazzReach) and conducting workshops. Sung was a recipient of a Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation grant enabling her quartet to conduct a jazz residency program for underserved youth in Camden, NJ.