Helen Sung's Live Wire Project

A live wire project featuring Helen Sung on piano, John Ellis on saxophone, Vicente Archer on bass, Kush Abadey on drums, and Wendel Patrick as DJ, presented by Live Wire Project (Jazz Plasticity) through the Helen Sung Group. The program was supported by Chamber Music Americas New Jazz Works, funded via the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Sung is an award-winning jazz pianist and composer, a Guggenheim Fellow who transitioned from classical training to jazz after discovering the genre at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated as part of the first class at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (now the Herbie Hancock Institute) and won the Mary Lou Williams Piano Competition sponsored by the Kennedy Center. Beyond her own ensemble, she has collaborated with Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Regina Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band. She currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural jazz artist-in-residence at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to study connections between jazz and neuroscience. A Steinway Artist, her playing combines crisp swing with elegant invention, drawing rhythmic inspiration from blues traditions while exploring original compositions inspired by both her classical background and contemporary jazz influences.