Chicago native Lenora Helm Hammonds (p/k/a Lenora Zenzalai Helm) is former U.S. Jazz Ambassador and recipient of the 2018 Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award. Jazz composer career highlights: MacDowell Composer Fellow; Chamber Music America’s Doris Duke New Jazz Works Composer award; Composing the full musical score for the children's play, Indigo Blue: A Reimagining of the Pied Piper for Walltown Children's Theater, Durham, NC and composer of several Black History Month promo campaigns on the ESPN network. Lenora has also penned several lyrics (with the composers’ permission) to the compositions of Andrew Hill, Wayne Shorter, and Branford Marsalis. A Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, her six CD releases garnered accolades as “...the voice of her generation,” by Jazziz Magazine. Consistently tours with her band performing her compositions in many of the largest jazz festivals and venues worldwide and she appears on recordings with the biggest names in Jazz. Education: B.M. in film scoring/voice at Berklee College of Music; M.M. in jazz performance/voice at East Carolina University. ABD for Doctor of Musical Arts, Music Education degree at Boston University (2019). Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC and co-directs their award winning NCCU Vocal Jazz Ensemble.
Lenora Helm
Studios
Monday Music
Lenora Helm worked in the Monday Music studio.
Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…