Faculty

Emily Sung is a Chinese American conductor, scholar and teacher from Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Before her appointment at the USC Thornton School of Music, Sung previously served as the associate director of Choral Activities at Princeton University, the director of the Chamber Choir and Choral Society at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the conducting faculty at Temple University. From 2016-2019, Sung was the assistant chorus master at Opera Philadelphia, where she helped prepare choruses for the company’s groundbreaking Festival O and numerous mainstage productions. Sung also previously served as the assistant to the music director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, the director of the Singing City Children’s Choir, the music director of Opera Philadelphia’s Teen Voices of the City Ensemble (T-VOCE), and a singer and co-conductor of the Chestnut Street Singers.

Sung earned her DMA in choral music at the USC Thornton School of Music, where she received the 2023 University Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Her dissertation concerns the construction of choral literature as a field of study. She earned her MM in choral conducting at Westminster Choir College and her bachelor’s degree in history at Princeton University. Her current research interests include Southeast Asian choral music, Chinese jazz, the history of American vocal jazz and choral jazz, and the intersection of vocals, gender expression and technological experimentation in electronic music. Sung is the co-artistic director of Suara, a choir dedicated to Southeast Asian choral works.