Award-Winning Korean Musician Creates Her Own Fusion Genre
Yujung Jung, a Korean Music Award-winning pianist and graduate of Dongduk Women’s University, Berklee College of Music and The Berklee Global Jazz Institute in the United States, has been playing at major festivals for two decades, dazzling audiences around the world with her unique jazz, Gospel and K-Pop fusion.A former lead pianist and music director for the national music group Heritage of Faith, Jung was instrumental in the Christian singing ensemble winning the Korean Music Award in 2007. And it was also there and then that she—already a recognized expert in Gospel and K-Pop—fell in love with jazz and started experimenting with fusing the genres.
“Several years ago, I read on NPR, or National Public Radio which is a national news broadcaster in the United States, a story about unexpected popularity of jazz in South Korea,” smiles Jung, whom we caught in Boston where she now works as the leading music professor at her alma mater, Berklee College of Music.“ They were even saying—admiringly—that the Jarasum Festival read review was “an alternate universe where jazz is suddenly young, hip, sexy and cool."
Jung herself starred at the Jarasum International Jazz Festival four times, both as a solo pianist and as music director and leader of her own band. She was also a featured guest star at the prestigious Trinidad Steel-Pan Jazz Festival bringing with her to the Caribbean the bittersweet sound of her original music, which—as cosmopolitan as jazz might be—s sprinkled with hidden K-Pop undertones, and it makes it irresistibly unique and enigmatic. A tad feminine and gentle, perhaps
Jung – who as a teacher sent to the elite Berklee Global Jazz Institute its first female Korean musician, her former student Sunny Park, and then herself became the first Berklee female Korean-born ear training professor—knows full well the challenges female jazz musicians face. Jung agrees with her Berklee colleague, professor and Grammy Award-winning drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who passionately calls for gender equality in jazz and points out how vastly women are underrepresented in the genre, which makes Jung all the more aware of what she calls “the sublimity of the gift of jazz.”
Next year, Jung is set to appear as a featured guest star at the world-famous Panama Jazz Festival. The festival’s founder and Artistic Director, the four time Grammy Award winner Danilo Pérez is an admirer of Jung’s art, as is Pérez’ wife Patricia Zarate—a Berklee professor and successful musician in her own right. Zarate is the founder of The Global Jazz Club which is dedicated to Women in Jazz and where Jung is a regular soloist.
“Jazz is incredibly liberating,” says Jung. “It really unleashes one’s creativity. Nothing could be compared to it. It is a precious, precious gift.”
—Elena Zoubareva
For more information contact All About Jazz.
