Lenora Zenzalai Helm

NY City-based vocalist and composer Lenora Zenzalai-Helm was created in Chicago right into a musical family. She began performing at eight, and continued to try out the trumpet, body organ, piano, and acoustic guitar while still a kid, and was the initial African-American woman to get a B.A. in Film Music Structure/Tone of voice. Zenzalai-Helm’s versatile abilities discovered a fertile house in NEW YORK, where she shifted in 1987. Documenting and touring with Michael Franks, Freddie Jackson, Kenny Garrett, Antonio Hart, Branford Marsalis, Junior Mance, and several various other high-profile pop, R&B, and jazz performers produced her a fixture within the N.Con.C. music picture; in 1994, she earned Greatest New Jazz Musician through the syndicated Jazz in the town radio system. Zenzalai-Helm’s personal musical projects are the R&B/jazz vocal group Sepia, who released many albums in Japan, and her jazz trio, the Zenzalai Task, which has performed many jazz and women’s celebrations. She actually is also a music instructor and clinician for marks K-eight and lectures at numerous colleges and published a manual about designer residencies and after-school applications at public colleges. 1998 noticed Zenzalai-Helm chosen like a Jazz Ambassador for the year by america Information Agency as well as the John F. Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts. She and her duo partner Brandon McCune performed around the Millennium Stage from the Kennedy Middle and toured Africa within that award. The Common Jazz Coalition called her Major Youthful Designer of 1998, which same 12 months she was also called Chief executive of International Ladies in Jazz. Like a single performer, Zenzalai-Helm debuted with 1995’s Awakenings, an individually released record, and adopted it with Soul Kid for the J Curve label in 1999.