Professor Nominated for First-Ever Grammy Award for Music Educator of the Year

Silvester Henderson—a Bay Area professor, musician and renowned gospel choir director—has been selected as a quarterfinalist for the first-ever Grammy Award for Music Educator of the Year. More than 30,000 initial nominations were submitted, and only 217 music teachers from 195 cities across 45 states have been announced as quarterfinalists. 

The 55th Annual Grammy Awards announced this year that a Music Educator Award would be established to recognize current educators (K – college, public and private schools) who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools. The award was open to current U.S. music teachers, and anyone could nominate a teacher. 

One recipient will be selected from 10 finalists and will be recognized for his remarkable impact on students' lives. The winner will be flown to Los Angeles to accept the award, attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, and receive a $10,000 honorarium. 

If Mr. Henderson wins the prestigious award, he says it will allow him to pursue his longtime goal of establishing a foundation to empower inner-city youth and all underprivileged people and communities through the power of gospel music. Henderson, who is a product of inner-city Oakland, has been making a push to reach as many inner-city youth as possible by showing them that they can get an education and succeed in life through the use of his gospel choir and years of experience teaching gospel music. Over the span of 32 years, Mr. Henderson has been a music professor at San Francisco State University and has been most known for establishing widely acclaimed gospel choir programs at UC Berkeley and Los Medanos College. He has worked with more than 21,000 students from all over the Bay Area and mentored countless young people over the years who are now continuing his gospel legacy in other parts of the country. 

"Silvester Henderson has been such an inspiration and model of excellence for me in the areas of in music, business and teaching and most recently in raising a family,” says Duana Demus Leslie, a former student and currently a professor at Modesto Junior College. “I have appreciated his mentorship and readiness to help those whom he knows can 'do better' than what they are doing. He gave me a 'talking to' on more than one occasion. He's down to earth and has a knack for meeting people where they are at and encouraging them to stretch higher and achieve more than they thought they could." 

Henderson, known by many as "Mr. Gospel," lives in Pleasanton with his wife and is the father of three daughters. In addition to teaching at Los Medanos College, he is a professor emeritus and lecturer of African American Studies and music at UC Berkeley and is the minister of music at Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward. 

For more information about the Music Educator Grammy Award, read the announcement at www.grammymusicteacher.com.