Claudette Sorel Award: Helen Sung, Jazz Piano

The Music Committee of the National Arts Club is proud to present pianist Helen Sung as the recipient of this year’s Claudette Sorel Award.

An acclaimed jazz pianist, composer, and Guggenheim Fellow, Helen Sung began her musical training in classical piano before discovering jazz while studying at the University of Texas. She joined the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance and won the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition. Helen has performed and toured with leading artists including Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Regina Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band. She is Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University and visiting faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her work also explores the intersection of jazz and neuroscience through collaborations with Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. A Steinway Artist, Helen Sung, “plays with crisp swing and elegant invention,” according to The New York Times.

Photo: Joseph Boggess Photography