Album Notes

Yuma is a serious Jazz musician who's bent on making his mark, and the opinion here is that we'll be hearing much more from him, he is a young Jazz musician making his mark,,,,...... David Benoit (Jazz Master, Composer)


Yuma Sung was born in the spring of 1989 in the Silicon Valley in Northern California.

He began studying calssical piano at the age of six and was attracted to Jazz piano at the age of nine. After he attended David Benoit's concert in the summer of 1998, who inspired Yuma and gave him a new musical direction. Yuma fell in love with improvising and jazz piano. Since then, he has been studying both classical and jazz piano.

Yuma has performed in numerous classical and jazz recitals. In 2000, two years after he started jazz piano, he won the first place in the San Jose Youth Jazz Competition. In the same year, he was invited to perform at the Steinway Piano Dinner Show with David Benoit, and the Yamaha Clavinova concert where he played duet with David Benoit.

He has become a seasoned concert performer, winning outstanding soloist and music from many jazz competitions, some of the major ones includes Reno Jazz Festival, Central California Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Festival, etc. He also performed solo jazz piano at numerous other events like the Lance Armstrong Cancer Foundation Party, Steinway Piano Dinner Show, and others.

He started his first jazz composition when he was 10 years old, in the Spring of 2000. To-date, he has composed numerous original pieces. In December of 2001, he submitted one of his major original composition called "Looking Up" to DownBeat Magazine and won the first place in its 25th Original Composition Contest. This was a tune that Yuma wrote in commenerating the deaths of his two beloved jazz teachers - Don Hass and the well-known Bay Area jazz pianist Smith Dobson.

Yuma is also very interested in film scoring. He is so captivated by film music that he is at least as much a listener as a viewer when watching a movie.

Yuma released his first CD titled "Looking Up" in May 2003, with David Benoit writing its liner notes. John Shifflett and Jason Lewis are part of his trio. It has a total of 8 pieces demonstrating his passions in contemporery Jazz: three of his originals (Looking Up, Gibberish, Smooth Samba), and one of his arrangements of "Somewhere in Time". The other tunes are: "Stella by Starlight', "Forrest Gump Suite", "Rrecordame", and "Miyuki".

As Yuma polishes his talents in Music, he started to contribute his knowledge to help inspiring the other youth. He taught at the San Jose Jazz Camp. In August 2003, Yuma is honored to be part of the Three Generation in Jazz Concert with Dave Brubeck, David Benoit, and himself as the third generation at the Villa Montalvo venue.