“A musical love letter and tribute to the masters of jazz I had the chance to study and work with…” Helen Sung, acclaimed jazz pianist and composer, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, looks forward to joining Guildhall Big Band on Sunday 9 March for the UK premiere performance of her new multi-movement work for solo pianist and big band, Portraits in Jazz; the work stems from Helen’s Guggenheim Fellowship.
UK JazzNews: Now, three years on from it…what are your thoughts on having been appointed to a Guggenheim Fellowship?
Helen Sung: The Guggenheim Fellowship is an incredible honor and has afforded me the opportunity to realize a dream project. It has given me the time and resources to complete a full program of big band music, and to record it, which is nuts! It has been one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever undertaken – writing big band music was not something I’d done a lot of, so being stretched like his has enriched and expanded my experience as a composer/arranger like few other endeavors.
UKJN: Tell us what we need to know about “Portraits in Jazz”…
HS: Portraits in Jazz is a musical love letter and tribute to the masters of jazz I had the chance to study and work with as a result of my studies in the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory. This 2-year program (which is now at UCLA and in 2019 renamed the Herbie Hancock Institute) seeks to teach jazz in the original “master / apprentice” model in a formal school setting.
It was a life-changing, transformative opportunity — my teachers included Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Jackie McLean, Wynton Marsalis, Barry Harris, Sir Roland Hanna, Slide Hampton, Ron Carter, Jon Faddis, Lewis Nash, Bobby Watson, and more; we also toured with Herbie and Wayne, two of my musical heroes…incredible!
Portraits in Jazz celebrates and honors these amazing individuals who helped create this music and art form that I love, and hopefully does it in a way that future generations of aspiring jazz artists can experience in a visceral way – through playing the music itself.
UKJN: Your GSMD concert is part of an educational project. Are there pieces of advice from your own teachers and mentors that still resonate with you? And do these coincide with any of the movements of “Portraits in Jazz”??
HS: Most definitely! Those jazz masters knew that teaching jazz is not just about technical information – it is also about sharing one’s life and experiences. They were incredibly generous with their time outside of class, taking us to dinner, hanging out, telling us stories from their fascinating and colorful lives. They were all such characters, super hip, with distinctive ways of saying things, which made their nuggets of wisdom very memorable!
Sir Ron Carter, for whom I wrote one of the compositions of Portraits entitled “Tall Tales,” jump-started my journey as a composer when he said to us: to find your own voice in this music, you need to write your own music. As a classically trained musician, I always thought of myself as a pianist who played what composers wrote – to now compose music myself was revolutionary, and today I enjoy it almost as much as performing!
“A Little Bird Watchin’ ” , another one of the pieces of Portraits, is dedicated to Jimmy Heath, whom I quote him all the time when I teach. Some of his gems:
- the learning process consists of imitation – assimilation – innovation (I have since realized this is a process one does repeatedly, vs just one time)
- learning is like an inverted cone: you come back around to the same things but each time you’re at a different place, higher up on the cone
- the jazz bandstand is a picture of true democracy: each musician must understand their role and come ready to play, each person gets to have their say, but in the end we together create something even greater together.
Finally, something all of the masters said to us: we want you to know and understand jazz history so that one day you can move the music forward in your own way.
UKJN: Please tell UKJN readers about one of your other projects …and when we can see or hear it?
HS: In addition to “Portraits in Jazz”, I am also currently working on a project called “Live Wire”, which is inspired by my experience as the first jazz artist-in-residence at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University’s cutting edge neuroscience research department.
I had the chance to dialogue and learn from Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientists and discuss how our brains engage with and experience music (a fascinating topic!). I’ve written music inspired by neurons, brain plasticity, and a group of compositions centered around a special kind of bird song: all birds chirp, tweet, etc. but some species pass down specific songs (from father to son) which are sang in courtship.
I’m calling this group of compositions “Modern Love Songs,” based on the songs of such birds as the red-billed fire finch, the star finch, the lavender waxbill, and more. I plan to record this music soon, so stay tuned! I am also currently mixing the recording of Portraits, which will be released in 2025, woohoo!
The UK premiere of Helen Sung’s ‘Portraits in Jazz’ will be given at Milton Court Concert Hall on Sunday 9 March, and is presented by Guildhall School of Music and Drama. One of the movements from the Work, ‘Wayne’s World’ won the 2022 BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition prize.
