JZ Music Presents

Three-Time Grammy Award Winner
The Reigning Queen of Contemporary Jazz
Dee Dee Bridgewater
featuring
Guggenheim Fellow
Steinway Artist
Helen Sung

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【Vocalist: Dee Dee Bridgewater – Biography】

Grammy and Tony Award winner Dee Dee Bridgewater is a jazz giant who, over a career spanning more than four decades, has risen to the very top tier of vocalists through her unique interpretations and bold innovations. She has won three Grammy Awards, most recently taking home Best Jazz Vocal Album for *Eleanora Fagan (1915–1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee*.

She began her professional career with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band. In the 1970s, she collaborated with numerous jazz greats, and after a foray into pop music and a move to Paris in the 1980s, she returned to jazz. Beginning in 1993, she independently produced her albums and founded DDB Records in 2006. Nearly all of her releases have received Grammy nominations, and her tribute album *Dear Ella* won two Grammy Awards. She has also achieved remarkable success in theater, winning a Tony Award for *The Wiz* in 1975, receiving a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for *Lady Day*, and performing in numerous musicals including *Carmen* and *Cabaret*. For many years, she also hosted the NPR radio program *JazzSet*.

In addition, she serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), dedicating herself to the global fight against hunger. Her honors include the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship, the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award, the Doris Duke Artist Award, and induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2019. She has also founded a nonprofit organization supporting women in jazz. From 2020 to 2022, she hosted multiple jazz master tribute concerts and jazz award ceremonies. In 2023, she continued her global touring, and in 2025, her album *Elemental* received another Grammy nomination.

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【Piano: Helen Sung – Biography】

Helen Sung is a highly accomplished jazz artist, Guggenheim Fellow, Steinway Artist, Kennedy Center Piano Competition winner, and Associate Professor at Columbia University.

Born in Houston, Texas, Sung graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts there and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where her exposure to jazz during her undergraduate studies led her to transition from classical to jazz music. As a member of the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (later renamed the Herbie Hancock Institute), she won the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition at the Kennedy Center.

In her professional career, Sung leads her own bands and album projects while also collaborating and touring with numerous jazz luminaries, including Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wynton Marsalis, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

She currently serves as a Visiting Professor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an Associate Professor at Columbia University, where she is also the first-ever Jazz Artist-in-Residence at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, exploring the connections between jazz and neuroscience. Additionally, she has launched several major artistic projects, including the large-ensemble work *Oracles*, the digital streaming series "Re:Route | Asian American Artists Revealed," and a collaborative initiative on neuroscience and music creation aimed at supporting individuals with Alzheimer's and other dementias.

A Steinway Artist, *The New York Times* has praised her playing for its "bright, swinging, elegant" quality and creativity, noting that while her rhythmic roots are in the blues, her classical training is also evident in her constantly fresh and original musical ideas.