About Lenora Zenzalai Helm

“LENORA ZENZALAI HELM IS A SINGER WITH ALL THE RIGHT STUFF: A MUSICIAN IN THE BROADEST AND MOST COMPLETE DEFINITION OF THE WORD, WITH AN EXPANSIVE VISION THAT SUBSUMES CATEGORY. THE BREADTH OF HER EXPRESSION IS STAGGERING…HER TECHNICAL PROWESS IS PHENOMENAL…SUPERB CREATIVE ARRANGING SKILLS…THOUGHTFUL COMPOSER. (SHE) HAS PLENTY IN HER ARSENAL OF TALENTS.”

— Pianist/Composer, Stanley Cowell

“WHEN FACED WITH THE QUESTION, ‘CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM THE SOUTHSIDE OF CHICAGO?’, THERE ARE TWO OBVIOUS ANSWERS: FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA, AND NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR LENORA HELM HAMMONDS.”

— - Myra Wooten, NCCU Now (Nov 10, 2014)

“. . . she shows an infinite capacity to swing.”

— bill milkowski

LENORA HELM HAMMONDS NAMED A LIFETIME ACHIEVER BY MARQUIS WHO’S WHO

MS. HELM HAS BEEN ENDORSED BY MARQUIS WHO’S WHO AS A LEADER IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Throughout her 40+-year span of musical achievements as a Jazz Vocal Musician specializing in Classic, Traditional standard jazz, Lenora (Zenzalai) Helm Hammonds has toured, recorded, and performed with her various groups, on international jazz stages, venues and festivals, as well as featured guest artist with renowned jazz icons. Her career as a vocal musician has encompassed time as a lyricist, guest artist, background singer, composer, and educator at North Carolina Central University. Dr. Lenora Z. Helm Hammonds is a Chicago IL native, Former U.S. Jazz Ambassador two-time Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, and a tenured, Associate Professor in the Department of Music and Jazz Studies Program at North Carolina Central University (NCCU).  She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in vocal jazz performance, jazz ear training, jazz pedagogy and songwriting, Director of NCCU Vocal Jazz Ensemble (NCCU’s Vocal Jazz Ensemble received the Best Choir 2018-19 award from HBCU Digest), and has authored several academic and student initiatives, including the planning, design, and coordination of an NEA-sponsored Teaching Artist Certificate program. Academic award highlights include a Duke University-NCCU John Hope Franklin Digital Humanities Fellowship, 2018 Javett Music Award International Jazz Scholar at University of Pretoria, South Africa, a 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Publishing, NCCU’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and receiving the highest faculty honor, the 2021 University of North Carolina Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award. Lenora’s dream for creating access to under-served global populations interested in vocal jazz education was realized in the creation of a library of online vocal training programs at www.LenoraHelm.online. Her research interests are at the intersection of digital humanities, intercultural competence, and Jazz, and is a published author with Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and Springer.A 2018 inaugural Javett International Scholar in Jazz for University of Pretoria, during her time as a musician, Helm Hammonds has earned recognition as: a quarter-finalist for the GRAMMY Music Educator of the Year Award, a Salzburg Global Citizenship Fellow, a UNC Global Educator Fellow, a Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, and the former US Jazz Ambassador under the State Department and Kennedy Center. Leadership roles in jazz include, Vice President, Area Unit Leadership, North Carolina, for Jazz Education Network (JEN). Additionally, she is a member of the esteemed Jazz Vocal Advisory Board for Juilliard Jazz, Juilliard, NYC, and is vocal jazz faculty during summers for Brevard Jazz Institute, Brevard, NC.

Her achievements in academia are in addition to more than three decades as a recording artist. Professionally known as Lenora Zenzalai Helm, Lenora Zenzalai (ZenZAYLay) Helm, she has also contributed to the music industry as a jazz clinician and vocal musicianship coach, with six solo recordings. Lenora’s  CD, I Love Myself When I’m Laughing, was listed on Independent Ear’s “30 recommended 2012 Record Releases.” Her seventh release, For the Love of Big Band was released March, 2020. 

Outside of the classroom, she has performed as a soloist, composer, and bandleader since 1983. Professor Hammonds has recorded and/or performed with such jazz greats as Donald Brown, Ron Carter, Andrew Hill, David Liebman, Stanley Cowell and others, headlined at venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Schomburg Center’s Women in Jazz Festival, JVC Jazz Festivals and Mellon Jazz Festival; and has toured with Freddie Jackson and Michael Franks. Along with appearing in St. Louis Woman with Dance Theatre of Harlem, she was a featured guest artist with the Durham Symphony and has held leading roles in theater productions including Aldonza in Man of La Mancha and in opera as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. 

Her work as a composer is featured in the children’s play Indigo Blue: A Reimagining of the Pied Piper by playwright Howard Craft, and the film After Life, by filmmaker Lana Garland. Notable recognitions from Helm’s composing work include composer awards from Chamber Music America and Doris Duke New Jazz Works, and the MacDowell Colony composer fellowship. Among her composing credits include features in several Black History Month campaigns on the ESPN Network.  Her work has garnered her such accolades as “voice of her generation” by Jazziz Magazine and receipt of the 2018 Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award.

She is a Duke University John Hope Franklin Fellow in Digital Humanities. With an expansive research background, Professor Hammonds has spent more than a decade exploring the intersection of jazz, global classrooms, intercultural competence, concurrent threads of vocal jazz pedagogy, and the application of digital humanities in the classroom.  She has published over a dozen papers on these topics and regularly speaks in conferences around the world, including the Jazz Education Network Conference in Dallas, TX; Jazz Symposium at the University of Pretoria in South Africa; International Jazz Day in Oranjested, Aruba; and Chancellor’s International Symposium in Durham, NC. 

Dr. Lenora Helm Hammonds completed her dissertation, A Jazz Orientation of the Three-Dimensional Developmental Trajectory of the Intercultural Maturity Model, published by ProQuest (Publication # 28770684) in 2021 from Boston University, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education.. She holds a Master of Music in Jazz Performance from East Carolina University and a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring and Vocal Performance from Berklee College of Music. 

Visit her at www.LenoraHelm.com