About Lenora Zenzalai Helm
Photo By: Chi Brown
“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.
Dr. Lenora Z. Helm Hammonds is a Chicago IL native, Former U.S. Jazz Ambassador for the State Department and Kennedy Center, two-time Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, GRAMMY Music Educator of the Year quarterfinalist, Salzburg Global Citizenship Fellow, currently serving as the Dean of the Professional Education Division at Berklee College of Music. Her academic leadership is conjoined to four decades as a jazz recording and performing artist p/k/a Lenora Zenzalai Helm. Outside of the classroom, she has performed as a soloist, composer, and bandleader since 1983.
Recent acclaimed solo recordings include For the Love of Big Band (2020) featuring her ensemble, Tribe Jazz Orchestra® and Journeywoman (2023) featuring her ensemble Tribe Jazz Orchestra Nonet both reaching the top-20 on JazzWeek radio and Top 10 streamed and downloaded on PlayMPE. Her ensemble inspired to change the face of large ensembles usually lacking gender diversity, is Tribe Jazz Orchestra® a diverse group of men and women, from around the globe, based in North Carolina.
She can be heard on over twenty albums as a guest artist or featured performer with some of the biggest names in Jazz, including eight on her own label, Zenzalai Music, distributed by RedEye Worldwide. Six of her titles available on Zenzalai Music include Journeywoman (2023); For the Love of Big Band (2020); I Love Myself When I Am Laughing (2011); Chronicles of a Butterfly (2008); Voice Paintings (2004); Precipice (2003). Earlier titles are Spirit Child (1998) and Awakenings (1995). Lenora has recorded and/or performed with such jazz luminaries as Geri Allen, Donald Brown, Joey Calderazzo, Ron Carter, Orrin Evans, Kenny Garrett, Antonio Hart, Andrew Hill, Hector Infanzon, David Liebman, Junior Mance, Branford Marsalis, Makoto Ozone, Nasheet Waits, Rodney Whitaker and others. Her festival and venue appearances as a headliner included Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola Women’s Jazz Festival, Schomburg Center’s Women in Jazz Festival, JVC Jazz Festivals and Mellon Jazz Festival, Jazzathon Festival, South Africa and countless others. Additionally, she has toured with pop artists Freddie Jackson and Michael Franks. She was a member of the neo soul group SEPIA and their recording, Absence of Pain with Marlon Saunders, Rosa Russ and Arif St. Michael, recording, performing and touring in the 90s. SEPIA can be heard on recordings of guitarist/producer Jiro Yosihda, Keiko Matsui and Multi-faceted in her performance experience, Lenora appeared with the Dance Theatre of Harlem as a soloist in St. Louis Woman, was a featured guest artist with the Durham Symphony and has held leading soloist roles in theater productions including Aldonza in Man of La Mancha and in Mozart’s The Magic Flute as Queen of the Night. Her work has garnered such accolades as being the “voice of her generation” by Jazziz Magazine and a recipient in 2018 of the Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award.
Previous Composer awards include the prestigious Chamber Music America/Doris Duke’s New Jazz Works, a MacDowell Colony composer fellowship, and music for ESPN Black History Month ads. She is a 2021-22 Chamber Music America Residency Presenting Jazz Consortium recipient. 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. Recent film score projects include The Problem of the Hero (David zum Brunnen), a winner over ten film festivals during 2023-24. Composer highlights include a 2023 Garth Newel Piano Quartet composition commission, and commissioned pieces performed in her Conductor debut at Carnegie Hall, 2024.
Dr. Hammonds has over twenty years in academic leadership previously holding positions as a tenured, Full Professor, Department Chair, Director of Graduate Programs, Jazz Studies, and Director of Vocal Jazz at North Carolina Central University. Her academic career accolades include authoring award winning academic and student initiatives. These include NEA-sponsored teaching artist certificate programs, undergraduate and graduate courses in vocal jazz performance, jazz ear training, jazz pedagogy, and songwriting. 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 published research on pioneering online curricula and pedagogy for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) with teams from global universities garnered the inaugural International Javett Jazz Music Scholar Award from University of Pretoria, South Africa, facilitating a busy lecture and guest residency schedule. An inaugural recipient of the 2022 Jazz Educator of Distinction award from Jazz Music Awards foundation, academic award highlights include a Duke University-NCCU John Hope Franklin Digital Humanities Fellowship, and receiving the highest faculty honor in North Carolina, the 2021 UNC Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring and Voice from Berklee College of Music, and a Master of Music, Jazz Performance from East Carolina University. For her final degree, 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, earning her a Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education degree from Boston University. Her arts education advocacy roles have included a stint as President of International Women in Jazz (1995-2000), service on the board member New York City Arts in Education Roundtable, and currently on the board of African American Jazz Caucus. Lenora is honored to also serve on NAfME’s Council for Jazz Education, Equity Committee and Professional Learning and Partnerships Committee.
As a researcher, her work explores the intersection of jazz, global classrooms, intercultural maturity, with concurrent threads of vocal jazz pedagogy and the application of digital humanities in the classroom earning her a role as a published author with Routledge, Taylor & Francis, and Springer. She has published over a dozen papers on these topics and regularly speaks in conferences around the world, including the Jazz Education Network conferences, International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers, Jazz Symposium at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and International Jazz Day in Oranjested, Aruba. Look for her vocal jazz performance pedagogy textbook Sing Vocal Jazz, Teach Vocal Jazz slated for release in 2025 on Routledge/Taylor-Francis. You can catch her TEDxBerklee Boston talk What Jazz Improv Can Teach You About Communication. She continues to serve the music education field in the jazz faculty of Brevard Jazz Summer Camp, is a member of esteemed jazz vocal advisory board for Juilliard Jazz and is an Additional Faculty of Somatic Voicework™ LoVetri Institute.
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