Helen Sung Trio at Mezzrow

Having toured mainly with her Quartet for the past few years promoting her album Anthem For A New Day, Sung revisits the classic piano trio format highlighting the music of Thelonious Monk. 2017 is Monk’s centennial year, and it is fitting that she would have a lot to say, and play. JazzTimes wrote, “Monk may very well be her patron saint,” and the legendary icon has indeed played a central part in Sung’s inspiring journey from classical to jazz piano: she was a member of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (at the New England Conservatory) and a semifinalist in the 1999 Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano competition. Sung was also commissioned by North Coast Brewing Company to write the theme song for their Belgian ale “Brother Thelonious” (featured on Anthem).

Having honed her craft working with the masters including the late Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and with ensembles ranging from the Mingus Big Band to the T.S.Monk Sextet to Terri Lyne Carrington’s Grammy-winning Mosaic Project, Sung leads bands comprised of some of this generation’s finest artists. With her renditions of Monk’s music receiving particular acclaim, expect the Helen Sung Trio to, as he famously urged, “lift the bandstand!” The UK’s Sunday Times praised her work on Anthem – “…she takes all sorts of liberties with Epistrophy. But nobody will complain when the results are so compelling.”