Chinese-American jazz pianist Helen Sung on women composers, her Quartet+ album and tour, and her identity
- The daughter of immigrants from China, Sung lacked female role models when she trained as jazz pianist, but celebrates several on her eighth album
- She talks about being an Asian-American artist and how welcoming audiences were in Taipei, where her parents spent time before moving to Texas
How many female role models did Helen Sung have when she began her transition into jazz at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical piano performance in 1993 and 1995, respectively? In a word, none.
How many female role models did Sung have when she earned a full scholarship to the inaugural class at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in 1995?
Again, none, which is surprising given that her excellent new album, Quartet+, pays heartfelt tribute to such stellar artists – all pioneering pianists – as Mary Lou Williams, Carla Bley, Geri Allen and Marian McPartland.
“When I got to the Monk Institute, the focus was on [male] jazz masters, so those were my role models,” Sung recalls.
Some of those masters also happened to be her teachers at the institute, including bass legend Ron Carter, saxophonist Jimmy Heath and pianist Sir Roland Hanna.
While Sung was there, her student ensemble at the institute did a concert tour with two other jazz masters, both men: pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Wayne Shorter.
“I love and respect all the great women jazz artists,” she says. “But I wasn’t looking to them while I got my act together.
“I was looking to the people that the masters I was studying with told me to look to, people like [piano giants] Bud Powell and Monk.”
Sung has since served on the jazz faculties at Columbia University, the Juilliard School and the Berklee College of Music, and is now on a tour of the United States.
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The tour is to promote Quartet+, her eighth and latest album, which was released in September 2021 by Sunnyside Records. Six of its songs are by women artists and five are by Sung.
The final selection – the aptly titled A Grand Night for Swinging – was written by Billy Taylor. He founded the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival in 1996 at the Kennedy Centre in Washington.
Sung won first-place honours at the festival in 2007.
I’ve never made a record so fast. We recorded the album in three days last April, mixed it in May, mastered it in June, and released it in September
Quartet+ showcases her dynamic piano playing, increasingly assured composing skills and her reverence for the work of Williams, Taylor, Bley, Toshiko Akiyoshi and the other artists she lovingly salutes on the album.
The album finds Sung rearranging their music for her quartet and the Harlem Quartet, which features violinists Ilmar Gavilan and Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky.
What results is a compelling synthesis of jazz and chamber music that is both fresh and steeped in tradition, while avoiding the tropes that such fusions can yield.
Her new album came to life when Sung received grants from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.
“A deadline really gets you in gear!” she said with a laugh. “I’ve never made a record so fast. We recorded the album in three days last April, mixed it in May, mastered it in June and released it in September. I was flying by the seat of my pants.”
Born in Houston, Sung is the daughter of Chinese parents, who moved first to Taiwan from mainland China, then to Texas. She is acutely aware of the challenges of cultural assimilation – of wanting to fit in and not stand out or appear “foreign”.
Like other Asian-Americans, Sung has experienced the uncomfortable phenomenon of being regarded as a “banana”, meaning – as she puts it – “yellow on the outside and white on the inside”.
The turning point for Sung occurred nearly a decade ago when she did a concert tour of China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan with the New York-based Mingus Dynasty big band. It included a performance at the Taiwan International Music Festival.
The programme for the festival misbilled her as being Korean, most likely because Sung is a common Korean name.
“When they found out I was Chinese and that both my parents grew up in Taipei, a lot of the Taiwanese musicians were like: ‘Oh my god!’ They were so excited, like: ‘You are one of us!’ And I felt this embrace I totally didn’t expect.
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“I was also left with a greater appreciation for my parents and how they raised me the way they did [in Texas]. Because they were in such a different place, and they sacrificed so much so I could play music.”
