Helen Sung

Helen Sung’s debut big band album Oracles (Sunnyside Records, June 2026) pays tribute to the jazz legends who were her mentor-teachers at the Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (now the Herbie Hancock Institute), for which she composed musical portraits ranging from “A Little Bird Watchin’” for impish Jimmy Heath, “Positively CT” for the indomitable Clark Terry, “Wayne’s World” for the mystic Wayne Shorter, “Mr. Virtuoso” for Maestro Ron Carter, to “Pianism,” a piano concerto celebrating a diverse group of keyboard legends: Sir Roland Hanna, Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, and Herbie Hancock. Now, Sung distills this music for small group, making the West Coast debut of her Oracles Quartet to feature music from her new album while including the music of a living oracle (or two!). 

ARTIST BIO:

Described as “one of the most exciting new pianist-composers of her generation” (Qobuz) with “piano playing at a quite unbelievably jaw-dropping level” (London Jazz News), Helen Sung is a dazzling story-teller at her instrument, moving listeners with her passion and inspired creativity.

Hailing from Houston, Texas, she is an alumna of its celebrated High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. After a jazz epiphany during undergraduate studies in classical piano at the University of Texas at Austin, she went on to become part of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute (now the Herbie Hancock Institute) of Jazz Performance, win the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition, and receive prizes including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Claudette Sorel Award from the National Arts Club.

In addition to leading her own band, Helen has performed with such luminaries as Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Regina Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band. Now based in New York City, she is visiting faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an Associate Professor at Columbia University, where she was also the inaugural jazz artist-in-residence at its Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute exploring analogies between jazz and neuroscience.

With ten leader albums to her credit, her latest release Oracles (Sunnyside Records, 2026) is a big band project featuring musical portraits of jazz legends who mentored her at the Monk Institute (one of the compositions “Wayne’s World,” won the 2022 BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition). Praised as “a Masterclass in Syncopation, Improvisation, and Star-Studded Jazz Tributes” (WBGO), Oracles topped the jazz radio charts and drew critical acclaim including a 4.5 star DownBeat review.

A Steinway artist, “Sung plays with crisp swing and elegant invention, her rhythms drawing from the music’s deepest blues roots – and setting listeners’ heads bobbing – while she explores her own fresh ideas, often inspired from her classical training.” (New York Times)