Jihye Chang Sung

Dr. Jihye Chang Sung enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, collaborator, educator, scholar, and advocate for new music in the United States and abroad. Her performances focus on the creative process of collaborating with living composers, curating programs that connect to various audiences, and giving context to contemporary works.

She is a recipient of the first prize of the Mikhashoff International Pianist-Composer Competition, the Henry Kohn Award from the Tanglewood Music Center, an Honorary Fellowship from the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and the Aaron Copland Recording Grant. She has appeared as a soloist with the Brevard Music Center Sinfonietta, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Fargo Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, Wonjoo Philharmonic Orchestra (South Korea), Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and Virtuosi of Festival Internacionale de Musica in Recife (Brazil), among others. She recently premiered Igerthi, a piano concerto written for her by Sungji Hong, with Intersection Music in Nashville.

Collaborating with living composers has been an important part of her performance career. Since 2016 she has led a collaborative project called “Continuum 88,” in which she focuses each concert season on a different genre of the piano repertoire such as sonatas, etudes, and variations, programming masterworks of the literature alongside newly commissioned works by younger composers in the same genres. 9 new works have been created by composers of diverse background and styles, and she has led more than 20 performances in venues across the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan. 2023 was a replay season of miniatures, etudes, variations, and fantasies and 2024 – 2025 will be the final year focusing on sonatas. She also specializes in working with young composers in academic settings and has recently led residencies both in person and online at Indiana University, UCLA, Tufts University, Rutgers University, Seoul National University, Texas Christian University, and Tulane University.

Piano etudes have been an important part of her projects, and she has given recitals and lectures on this topic at various institutions and festivals. She has also directed a successful collaboration project “BMC Etudes Project’ with the Brevard composition area since 2016. Her most recent etude related project is “Boston Etudes,” which started during the pandemic year in 2020 with 8 composers based in Boston. 8 new etudes were written for her, and she premiered them in live stream performances on her YouTube Channel throughout 2021. She went on to record them, and they will be released in October 2024 on New Focus Recordings.

Other research interests include music by living women composers and Korean composers, which she has brought to venues at UC Berkeley, Boston Conservatory, and C4NM San Francisco. Since 2022, Chang has presented several lectures and classes focusing on music as means to understand Korean culture at University of Cincinnati College of Music, Florida State University, University of North Texas, and University of East Maine.

As a chamber musician she has collaborated with musicians from across the States including Cheeyun, Jordan Bak, Frank Cohen, Andrés Diaz, Inbal Segev, and Richard Young, and has appeared at the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, Blue Candlelight Music Series in Dallas, Broman Series at Mary Baldwin University, Parker Concert Series in Brevard, and Artists Series of Tallahassee.

Dr. Sung graduated Summa cum laude from Seoul National University and earned her Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, under the tutelage of the late György Sebök, Edward Auer, Evelyn Brancart, and Reiko Neriki. Additionally, she studied with Emanuel Ax, Marc Durand, Claude Frank, John Kimura Parker, Robert Levine, Ursula Oppens, and John Perry at Tanglewood Music Center, Orfort Music Festival, Banff Music Center, and Sarasota Music Festival. Dr. Sung is thrilled to join the piano department at Boston University as a Senior Lecturer in fall 2024. She is also a faculty member at the Brevard Music Center and director of the Piano Intensive Bulgaria. Her recordings can be found on Albany, Centaur, Parma, and Sony Korea.

You can visit https://instagram.com/jihyechangpiano to see her passion for espresso, and listen to her online premieres and other performances on https://www.youtube.com/jihyechangpiano.