Jazz music really was a saving grace in my life,” says pianist, composer, and bandleader Helen Sung. She approaches the big statement with little ceremony, her characteristic earnestness and matter-of-fact tone making an idea that would sound clichéd coming from almost anyone else feel true. It is true, and Sung’s story explains why. But just as interesting is the way that the same thing happens in her music: She rejuvenates well-worn ideas, from her ability to combine jazz and classical music in unexpected ways to her resolute embrace of the freshest possible take on swing. She sees them not as shortcuts, but as sources of inspiration—fuel for her relentless curiosity.
“I feel like in current writing or criticism, there seems to be a division,” she says. “On one side, people see swing as authentic jazz, whereas the other side sees people who love to swing as being outdated and behind the times. That’s one thing I’m sad about.”
Both of those skills are evident on Sung’s ninth studio album, Quartet+, released in the fall of 2021. She features swing throughout, reimagining Billy Taylor’s “A Grand Night for Swinging”—which she first heard on a Mary Lou Williams recording—on two different tracks, and presenting a blistering take on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz theme, “Kaleidoscope,” as well as a groovier one of Toshiko Akiyoshi’s “Long Yellow Road.”
Her classical bona fides are on display via her arrangements for and collaboration with the Harlem Quartet, a Grammy-winning string quartet. Alongside her own quartet, which includes saxophonist and flutist John Ellis, bassist David Wong, and drummer Kendrick Scott, they sound bright but never saccharine, clean and crisp but never sterile. “There’s no sound like Helen’s sound,” Scott says.
“Now, she understands that she’s an integral part of making this music breathe on its own,” says her former teacher Ron Carter. “She will be a very important person to hear whenever you get a chance to hear her.”
But Sung also expands her reach on , building out the answers to a new set of
