Jonathan Henderson, music
By Jeremy Powers ’24
Jonathan Henderson turns on his Zoom camera, unmutes his microphone, and gives a thumbs up. Instruments hang on the wall in the background, a few guitars, a fretless bass, and the bookshelf to his right stretches up to touch the ceiling.
College of the Atlantic is pleased to welcome Henderson as a new faculty member in music. He plays bass, percussion, piano, and guitar, and brings a unique insight into how social structures and music interact and affect one another. His experience as a teacher and professional musician show his love and dedication to the craft, and he is excited to begin teaching at COA.
“I’m really interested in interdisciplinary work, and as an ethnomusicologist I’m interested in the intersection between music, anthropology, politics, and history. COA feels like a great place to be able to teach at those intersections and collaborate in a creative way with students and other faculty members,” he says.
Henderson completed his graduate work in ethnomusicology at Duke University and worked as an instructor and mentor in the departments of music and African American studies there. He has a range of teaching experience, both in secondary and higher education settings, and his is a student-focused teaching philosophy.
“A lot of my work begins with what interest students have in music and working out from there,” he says. “I think the best teachers are life-long learners, and I love being in the classroom because I’m always surprised by what a student shares, or I’m caught off guard by a piece of music that they bring in that I’ve never heard.”
Watching students grow as musicians is another thing he loves about teaching. “I know that through my work they’ll figure out ways of incorporating music into their lives going forward, and learn skills that they can apply to everyday situations,” he says.
Henderson has some plans in the works to expand the musical offerings at COA. One project is to start using a newly renovated recording studio on the second floor of Gates Community Center, an effort led by COA audio visual technology specialist Zach Soares ’00 which has been in the works for a while. “It’ll be great to have students creating podcasts in the studio, recording original music, and just getting in there to learn about this technology,” he says. He is also hoping to start a Brazilian percussion ensemble in the fall term.
COA is delighted to add Henderson to the faculty, provost Ken Hill said. “In the coming years, Jonathan will teach courses on ethnomusicology, studio recording, composition, and applied instrument training. His broad musical training spans multiple regions and historical genres, and will be most welcomed in our community.”
In his musical life outside of teaching, Henderson has a band called Kaira Ba, which is a collaborative project with Senegalese musician Diali Cisshoko. “We’re still going to try to remain active from a distance. We have a few things happening this year that I’m going to fly in for, and in the summer, we’ll be collaborating more closely. We’ll be playing at the Ossipee music festival in Maine, down near Portland in the summer, in July.” Additionally, Henderson recently premiered a piece titled Anechoia Memoriam, “which is a participatory installation for a typewriter that electro-mechanically controls a grand piano. The score for this piece is composed of over 150 names of people of color killed by law enforcement in the United States, so it’s designed as a participatory memorial,” he says.
In his free time, Henderson enjoys getting outside with his family and exploring the Maine coast. “I also love cooking and baking, which seems to square pretty well with Maine winters,” he laughs. He also, of course, enjoys listening to music, and since he’s moved here, he’s had a certain piece on his mind. “I’ve always loved visiting the ocean, but I’ve never actually lived in such proximity to the ocean before. I’ve been thinking recently about a piece called Become Ocean by the composer John Luther Adams, which is an orchestral work that is very textural and is composed around the idea of energy building and releasing through the development of waves. It’s just a series of several waves kind of swelling and receding. It’s maybe 40 minutes long, and I’ve been thinking about that since being here, so I’ll have to put it back on and listen to it again,” he says.
