Associate Professor of Violin at Florida State University, violinist Benjamin Sung is also a Faculty Artist and Violin Coordinator of the Brevard Music Center where he acts as Concertmaster of the Brevard Opera Orchestra. Recent concert highlights include the 2022 Brevard Music Festival; the 24 Caprices by Paganini during the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season; a complete Beethoven sonata cycle with pianist David Kalhous; and a TED talk for TEDx Fargo. In 2022, after sharing 10 years of concerts of the violin-piano repertoire, Mr. Sung and Mr Kalhous are embarking on a new chapter of their partnership, called extension: an effort to present the greatest music of the existing repertoire along with newly commissioned works from today’s most exciting composers, both in live performance and recorded and streaming media.
Sung has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Camerata Romeu of Havana, Cuba, the Virtuosi of Festival Internacionale de Musica in Recife, Brazil, and the National Repertory Orchestra. He is equally in demand as a chamber musician, having shared the stage with great performers including pianist Monique Duphil, and cellists Antonio Meneses and Marcio Carneiro. He is a past winner of the Starling Award of the Eastman School of Music and the Violin Fellowship of the Montgomery Symphony, and an Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant.
An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, Sung has recorded the music of composers Steve Rouse and Marc Satterwhite for Centaur Records, has performed and taught for Studio 2021 at Seoul National University, and has worked with many of the greatest composers of this generation, including John Adams, Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, and Helmut Lachenmann. He recently released an album of new American works entitled FluxFlummoxed on Albany Records, a recording hailed by Fanfare Magazine as "a brilliant performance of four superb works" with "impeccable intonation and tone production." Mr. Sung has an upcoming new solo album featuring works by Sciarrino, Berio, Maderna, and Schnittke.
Sung holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Oleh Krysa, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, from the studio of Nelli Shkolnikova. Sung also studied at the Professional Training Program at Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival Academy, the New York String Seminar, and the Chamber Music Residency at The Banff Centre. Benjamin lives with his wife Jihye and son Aiden in Tallahassee, Florida, where he enjoys running, gardening, and everything that comes out of Jihye’s kitchen.