Helen Sung

About

Helen Sung is an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer, and a newly named 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. A native of Houston, Texas, and graduate of its High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA), she eschewed her classical piano upbringing after a jazz epiphany during undergraduate studies at UT Austin. Helen went on to become part of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute (now the Herbie Hancock Institute) at the New England Conservatory of Music. Her recent releases Sung With Words (Stricker Street), a collaborative project with renowned poet Dana Gioia funded by a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant, and Anthem For A New Day (Concord Jazz) topped the jazz charts. Helen and her band have performed at major American festivals and venues including Newport, Monterey, Disney Hall, SFJAZZ, and Carnegie Hall. Internationally, her “NuGenerations" Project toured southern Africa as a U.S. State Department Jazz Ambassador, and recent engagements include debuts at the London Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai, Blue Note Beijing, and the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival. She has performed with such luminaries as the late Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis (who named her as one of his "Who's Got Next: Jazz Musicians to Watch!"), MacArthur Fellow Regina Carter, and Grammy-winning artists including Terri Lyne Carrington, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band. Helen is a Steinway Artist and has served on the jazz faculties at Berklee College of Music, the Juilliard School, and Columbia University, where she also was the inaugural jazz artist-in-residence at Columbia's prestigious Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

Download Complete Biography >>

REFLECTIONS

New in November

The crispness of Autumn is in full swing and the holiday season is rapidly bearing down on us -- where did 2021 go? I start this month with a visit to Berklee's Institute of Jazz & Gender Justice, where talented students learn to play their instruments together with studying (and grappling with) the social context of the jazz scene...no mean feat! I also look forward to playing some venues for the first time: Brooklyn's Soapbox Gallery and Jimmy's Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH. And perhaps most exciting of all, Quartet+ makes its first trip to Europe! We will play one of my favorite festivals, Poland's Kalisz International Jazz Piano Festival, together with the Atom String Quartet, Poland's foremost jazz string ensemble. It is indeed the season of Thanksgiving, and I am grateful for the return of live music, opportunities to share new music with audiences, to play with new colleagues in new venues. Hope to see y'all at a jazz spot near you soon :) 

For the latest stories and photos, visit me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.