Carnegie Hall

Helen Sung is an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. A native of Houston, Texas, and alumna of its High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, she eschewed her classical upbringing after a jazz epiphany during undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Sung went on to become part of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music and win the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition.

Sung’s newest album, Quartet+ (Sunnyside Records) garnered 4.5 stars in DownBeat and inclusion in its “Best of 2021 Albums” list, and a JazzTimes cover story (January 2022), while previous releases Sung with Words (Stricker Street), a collaborative project with renowned poet Dana Gioia, and Anthem for a New Day (Concord Jazz) topped the jazz charts. In addition to her own band, Sung has performed with such luminaries as Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Regina Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band.

Recent activities of note include Re-Orientation: Asian American Artists Out Loud (made possible by a Chamber Music America Digital Residency grant): provoked by the unfortunate violence against the Asian American community, Sung’s quartet collaborated with a poet, a hip-hop artist, and an installation artist in a series of interdisciplinary events that showcased the range and diversity of Asian American artistry. Sung also partners with the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Zuckerman Institute Public Programs, and Arts & Minds, presenting programs centered on the neuroscience behind making and hearing music to engage those living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Sung’s 2021 Guggenheim fellowship is being applied toward a multi-movement composition for big band: One of the movements, “Wayne’s World,” won the 2022 BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize.

Sung has served on the jazz faculties of the Berklee College of Music and The Juilliard School. She is currently a visiting faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an associate professor at Columbia University, where she also was the inaugural jazz artist-in-residence at its prestigious Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute exploring the intersection of jazz and neuroscience. Sung is a Steinway Artist.

Harlem Quartet has been praised for its “panache” by The New York Times and hailed in the Cincinnati Enquirer for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing, and intelligent.” Since its public debut at Carnegie Hall in 2006, the ensemble has thrilled audiences and students across the US as well as the UK, France, Belgium, Brazil, Panama, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, Ethiopia, and South Africa.

The quartet’s mission is to advance diversity in classical music, engaging young and new audiences through the discovery and presentation of varied repertoire that includes works by composers of color. Passion for this work has made the quartet a leading ensemble in both educational and community engagement activities. It began a multi-year residency with London’s Royal College of Music in 2018. From 2015 to 2020, it led an annual workshop at Music Mountain in Falls Village, Connecticut. In 2021, it began two other institutional affiliations: as the inaugural Grissom Artist-in-Residence at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and as Quartet-in-Residence at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

The quartet collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea in the Grammy-winning Hot House album that included Corea’s “Mozart Goes Dancing,” which won a separate Grammy as Best Instrumental Composition. Harlem Quartet’s latest album, Cross Pollination, features works by Debussy, William Bolcom, Dizzy Gillespie, and Guido López-Gavilán.

Harlem Quartet was founded in 2006 by the Sphinx Organization, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to building diversity in classical music and providing access to music education in underserved communities. 

John Ellis is one of New York’s premier tenor saxophone players. With more than 150 album credits as a sideman, he has recorded with a variety of artists, including Charlie Hunter, Robert Glasper, Darcy James Argue, Helen Sung, Kendrick Scott Oracle, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Sting. Ellis won second place at the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Saxophone Competition in 2002; received a composition grant through The Jazz Gallery for the creation of new work (“Dreamscapes,” “The Ice Siren,” and “MOBRO”); and was recognized as the 2014 Make Jazz Fellow by the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. Ellis has released 13 albums as a leader, three of those featuring his New Orleans–centered band Double-Wide, which has toured extensively and was featured on the main stage of the 2012 Newport Jazz Festival. He co-produced the music for the children’s book series Baby Loves Jazz with Aaron Goldberg, and wrote the theme music for the NPR podcast Rough Translation. His most recent album, Say It Quiet, is a collaboration with Glenn Patscha and Adam Levy. 

Bassist David Wong was born and raised in New York City. In 2004, he graduated from The Juilliard School. He has studied with Orin O’Brien (New York Philharmonic) and Ron Carter. He is currently a member of Roy Haynes’s Fountain of Youth Band, the Charles McPherson Quintet, and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. He was also the last bass player in the Heath Brothers Quartet led by Jimmy Heath and Albert “Tootie” Heath, as well as Hank Jones’s Great Jazz Trio and is featured on the piano master’s last recording. Wong is on faculty at Temple University, Purchase College, The New School, and The City College of New York.

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and raised in Denver, Colorado, Rudy Royston has been a professional teacher, drummer, and percussionist for almost 20 years. He studied classical percussion at the University of Denver, where he earned undergraduate degrees in music and English, in addition to teacher certification from Metropolitan State College of Denver. Royston grew up playing drums in church, and found his voice under the auspices of Colorado’s celebrated trumpeter Ron Miles, whom Royston deems his greatest influence and with whom he has played since 1991. He has taught, recorded, and performed all styles of music from jazz to marching percussion. Since moving to Piscataway, New Jersey in 2006, Royston has completed a master’s degree at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. He continues to perform with many of today’s finest jazz musicians.