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SEMENYA
McCORD, vocalist/music educator/composer, earned her degree in
Music Education from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.
Her popular musician father, the late Ken Henderson, was
an early and significant influence on her desire to sing and
touch people through music. At the University of Massachusetts
in Amherst she was turned on to the powerful traditions of
gospel music with Horace C. Boyer and of jazz with master
drummer Max Roach and reedman Archie Shepp.
 McCord
has been performing throughout New England since 1975,
developing programs and residencies featuring spirituals, blues,
traditional and contemporary jazz for audiences of all ages
through Young Audiences of Massachusetts, Inc. the Massachusetts
Cultural Council, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Since
1982, as Artistic Director of Hemisphere Associates, a
collaboration of New England performing artists, she has
directed annual tributes to the life and "dream" of
Martin Luther King, Jr., the music of Billie Holiday and Duke
Ellington, and community events that celebrate cultural
diversity through the arts.
From
1991 to 2003, McCord taught part-time at the University of
Massachusetts in Dartmouth, teaching "The Art of Rock &
Roll and "Jazz: A Listener's Guide". She also taught
private voice students at the Longy School of Music in
Cambridge, The New England Conservatory's Preparatory and
Continuing Education Division in Boston, and the Applied Music
Program at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Having
returned home to Galesburg in 2003, McCord is teaching jazz
voice and related classes at
both Carl Sandburg College and Knox College. She completed her
Masters in Music, with a
concentration in Jazz Studies, at Northern Illinois University
in May, 2006.
McCord
is an active member of the International Association for Jazz
Education, Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity, and
the Music Educators National Conference. |
