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.

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REFLECTIONS

Many Happy Returns!

Our world has fundamentally changed in many ways, and with every passing day it seems even more change comes my way, so when there are moments to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, I gratefully look forward to these reunions. This month I am delighted to perform with the Mingus Big Band again on October 19 & 26 (Tuesdays) at The Django, located in the Roxy Hotel Tribeca (unfortunately, the Band's long time home, the wonderful Jazz Standard, was one of the casualties of the pandemic). I am also excited to present Zoom webinars on the great Mary Lou Williams as part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's terrific "Swing U" program, a Listening Party for Healdsburg Jazz, and another Jazz & Neuroscience program together with neurorehabilitation researcher and dancer Miriam King for Arts & Minds Rhythm and Reason series in collaboration with the Zuckerman Institute and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. I hope you'll join us, we would love to see you too :)

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