Helen Sung Big Band Oracles Vinyl Release

Despite the billed title, this is Helen Sung’s Oracles Quartet, marking the vinyl release of Oracles. The Houston-born pianist and composer joins vibraphonist Steve Nelson, drummer Adam Cruz and bassist David Ephross for small-group reimaginings of music from her debut big-band album, alongside original pieces by Nelson. Oracles is Sung’s tribute to the jazz masters who mentored her at the Thelonious Monk Institute, including Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Herbie Hancock and Sir Roland Hanna.

Now based in New York, Sung bridges jazz and classical traditions as a pianist, composer and arranger. A member of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, she has received the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Claudette Sorel Award. Her collaborators include Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Regina Carter, Terri Lyne Carrington and Cécile McLorin Salvant. Reviewing the big-band Oracles, Jazz Weekly found it “richly textured” with room for “adventurous solos,” while Spectrum Culture praised the ensemble’s “push-and-pull effect.”