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Where To Find Jun Hee Park This Year
The Korean jazz pianist Jun Hee Park is bringing her brand of jazz to New York and is booked to star in concerts at some of the city's most-recognized jazz rooms, including the Django Jazz Club
The Korean jazz pianist Jun Hee Park is bringing her brand of jazz to New York and is booked to star in concerts at some of the city's most-recognized jazz rooms, including the Django Jazz Club, where she will be performing as the lead pianist of Marty Scott's quintet.
A few nights a week, at a different venue entirely, Park is somewhere else. She is part of a weekly residency at the historic Stonewall Inn as lead pianist for trombonist Laura Orzehoski's quartet. Stonewall isn't just a music venue. It's a National Monument, designated by the Department of the Interior as the first U.S. site to honor the modern gay civil-rights movement, and it hosts touring acts as big as Taylor Swift and Madonna alongside its regular music calendar. Getting a standing gig there speaks to Park's level of achievement in the world of jazz and shows us that her reputation has already traveled through New York's jazz world in a short time.
Rewind a decade and she was building that same kind of reputation from the piano bench in Daejeon, South Korea. Park co-founded Jazz Deo in 2016, which soon became the regular headlining act at Yellow Taxi, the city's top jazz club. From there the group started winning things it had no business winning as a young band: a Grand Prize at the Haeundae Jazz Festival, a return invitation the following year to headline the festival's "Jazz Falls in Love with Wine" series, another Grand Prize at the Busan Citizens Park Street Art Festival, a third-place finish among sixty competing bands at the Gaecheon Arts Festival. Korean outlets like Yonhap News Agency and Kookje covered the run closely, and Park's name kept coming as the driving force behind the band's success. In 2019, she headlined the Club Diva Janus in Seoul, a club that helped shape modern jazz in Korea.
New York noticed too, eventually. Bassist and composer F. August Bish hired Park as lead pianist and arranger for his upcoming recording projects, including an album called "Godbuster," handing her control over the piano and keyboard parts for the sessions. Grammy-nominated percussionist Rogério Boccato booked her for a run of New York dates that includes a stop at the Poster House Museum. She has also been tapped to record with jazz artists Ian Weidmann and Noah Myers and this Fall she is scheduled to headline two concerts at the at the K-Janang Rave in Seoul.
Line these gigs up next to each other and the range is what stands out. A club in Daejeon. A landmark club in Seoul. A national monument in Greenwich Village. A museum stage and some of New York's hottest jazz clubs. Park continues to add more and more accomplishments to her already impressive resume. Different cities, different scenes, different audiences entirely, and Park has been invited into all of them, showing us that she is an artist to watch.
A few nights a week, at a different venue entirely, Park is somewhere else. She is part of a weekly residency at the historic Stonewall Inn as lead pianist for trombonist Laura Orzehoski's quartet. Stonewall isn't just a music venue. It's a National Monument, designated by the Department of the Interior as the first U.S. site to honor the modern gay civil-rights movement, and it hosts touring acts as big as Taylor Swift and Madonna alongside its regular music calendar. Getting a standing gig there speaks to Park's level of achievement in the world of jazz and shows us that her reputation has already traveled through New York's jazz world in a short time.
Rewind a decade and she was building that same kind of reputation from the piano bench in Daejeon, South Korea. Park co-founded Jazz Deo in 2016, which soon became the regular headlining act at Yellow Taxi, the city's top jazz club. From there the group started winning things it had no business winning as a young band: a Grand Prize at the Haeundae Jazz Festival, a return invitation the following year to headline the festival's "Jazz Falls in Love with Wine" series, another Grand Prize at the Busan Citizens Park Street Art Festival, a third-place finish among sixty competing bands at the Gaecheon Arts Festival. Korean outlets like Yonhap News Agency and Kookje covered the run closely, and Park's name kept coming as the driving force behind the band's success. In 2019, she headlined the Club Diva Janus in Seoul, a club that helped shape modern jazz in Korea.
New York noticed too, eventually. Bassist and composer F. August Bish hired Park as lead pianist and arranger for his upcoming recording projects, including an album called "Godbuster," handing her control over the piano and keyboard parts for the sessions. Grammy-nominated percussionist Rogério Boccato booked her for a run of New York dates that includes a stop at the Poster House Museum. She has also been tapped to record with jazz artists Ian Weidmann and Noah Myers and this Fall she is scheduled to headline two concerts at the at the K-Janang Rave in Seoul.
Line these gigs up next to each other and the range is what stands out. A club in Daejeon. A landmark club in Seoul. A national monument in Greenwich Village. A museum stage and some of New York's hottest jazz clubs. Park continues to add more and more accomplishments to her already impressive resume. Different cities, different scenes, different audiences entirely, and Park has been invited into all of them, showing us that she is an artist to watch.
