Helen Sung – piano
John Ellis – saxophone
Joe Martin – bass
Rudy Royston – drums
Christie Dashiell – voice
 
Winning a Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation “New Jazz Works” grant enabled pianist/composer Helen Sung to fulfill a long-time dream: to create Sung With Words, a collaborative project with the celebrated American poet Dana Gioia. Utilizing jazz and poetry as powerful catalysts to create new music, Sung With Words is Sung’s first project to feature all original music, consisting of vocal works where Gioia’s poems serve as lyrics, as well as instrumental compositions inspired by words (for example, her “Lament for Kalief Browder”).

Pianist/composer Helen Sung hails from Houston, TX, where she attended the High School for the Performing & Visual Arts. An aspiring classical pianist before jazz intervened during undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Sung went on to graduate from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (at the New England Conservatory) and win the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition. Now based in New York City, Sung has worked with a “Who’s Who” in Jazz, including the late Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, and MacArthur Fellow Regina Carter... See More