Helen Sung

Helen Sung is a jazz pianist and composer known for music that draws on both the classical conservatory tradition and the swing and bebop language of jazz. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she began classical piano and violin at the age of five and trained at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the University of Texas at Austin before turning to jazz in her early twenties. She graduated from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, won the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition in 2007, and was later named a Guggenheim Fellow. Her 2014 album Anthem for a New Day, a major-label debut for Concord Jazz, topped jazz radio charts and reached the upper tier of the Billboard jazz chart. A Steinway artist, she is also active as an educator.