Lenora Zenzalai Helm

Dr. Lenora Helm Hammonds, a Chicago native, is a vocal jazz musician, composer, arranger, and educator whose academic career of the last two decades included her role as director of vocal jazz in North Carolia Central University’s Jazz Studies program, and finally as fully tenured professor and Department Chair, now currently serves as Dean of the Professional Education Division at Berklee College of Music. Distinctions include TEDx Speaker, former U.S. Jazz Ambassador, two-time Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, GRAMMY Music Educator of the Year quarterfinalist, and Jazz Educator of Distinction award recipient from Jazz Music Awards foundation and a Berklee College of Music Gospel Hall of Fame Inductee. She continues to serve on the Jazz Vocal Advisory Board at Juilliard Jazz. Her academic leadership is conjoined to four decades as a jazz recording and performing artist p/k/a Lenora Zenzalai Helm. Career highlights include being a MacDowell composer fellow, Chamber Music America/Doris Duke’s New Jazz Works composer award recipient.

She made her Carnegie Hall debut as conductor in the 2024 MidAmerica Productions season culminating over twenty years conducting vocal and instrumental jazz bands and ensembles. Her conducting accolades include directing international and national high school and collegiate all-state jazz competitions, including Jack Rudin Collegiate Jazz Championships, and Jazz at Lincoln Center and founding her own big band, Tribe Jazz Orchestra. With nine acclaimed jazz recordings as a leader, she also appears on dozens of CDs with the biggest names in Jazz, including Ron Carter, Dave Liebman, Donald Brown, Andrew Hill, Stanley Cowell and Branford Marsalis. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring/Voice from Berklee College of Music, a Master of Music, Jazz Performance/East Carolina University and Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education from Boston University. As a published author her work is at the intersection of jazz, intercultural maturity, and digital humanities. Look for her vocal jazz performance pedagogy textbook Sing Vocal Jazz, Teach Vocal Jazz slated for 2025 on Routledge/Taylor-Francis. Catch her TEDxBerklee Boston talk What Jazz Improvisation Can Teach You About Communication.. She makes her home between Durham, NC and Boston, MA with her husband Fred Hammonds. www.LenoraHelm.com

Disclosure information not submitted.

Presentation(s):

• The Sistering: Advancing the tradition of collaboration in Jazz. How four wise women joined forces to tell a new story.

  Thursday, January 8, 2026
  4:00 PM - 4:50 PM CST