Winner of the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition, pianist-composer Helen Sung is pioneering her own path: as an Asian-American artist, she bridges diverse worlds with her singular vision and sound. A native of Houston, Texas, and graduate of its renowned High School For The Performing & Visual Arts, Sung was an aspiring classical pianist before “a Tommy Flanagan solo changed everything” during studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Soon after, she was accepted into the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (at the New England Conservatory), an intensive program that proved to be an unprecedented opportunity to study and perform with some of the greatest masters of jazz music.
Now based in New York City, Sung has gone on to work with such jazz masters as Clark Terry, Buster Williams, Ron Carter, Steve Turre, and Wayne Shorter, and with luminaries including Terri Lyne Carrington, Steve Wilson, T.S.Monk, and MacArthur Fellow Regina Carter. She also appears frequently with the Mingus Big Band and is a member of the last Clark Terry Big “Badd” Band.
