Zakai Henderson. Lucy Gellman Photo.
Zakai Henderson leaned in over his bass, his callused fingers slipping onto the strings as if they were old friends. He steadied the instrument, his left wrist pliant as it wrapped around to the front, and two right fingers perched just over the bridge. As Kenny Dorham’s “Blue Bossa” drifted up through the room, he began to bob his head from side to side and sway, the music flowing through him.
This Thursday and Friday, Henderson is headed to the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s All-State Music Festival, where he and fellow student Nadia Okwuosa will represent both New Haven and Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School in an all-state jazz band and all-state mixed choir respectively. The two, both seniors who have received full scholarships for the event, are the only New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) high school students to attend.
“It feels amazing! I feel so honored!” Henderson said in an interview Wednesday morning, standing in a practice room just off of a second-floor hallway. From a dance studio across the hall, Stephen Hankey’s voice wove in and out of a recording of “Imagine,” feet whooshing across the floor. “I feel like I finally reached the mountain peak, and it makes me want to work harder.”
“I’m really excited,” said Okwuosa, an alto who performed with the all-state mixed choir her sophomore year, and will be singing poetry by Langston Hughes that is set to music with the choir. “All-State is such a wonderful experience. It’s a different technique, a different grind … you have to come prepared.”
For both of them, the story of the festival is really a story of how music has gotten them through high school, and is now propelling them on to college. Growing up in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven, Henderson first fell in love with music through his grandfather, who listened to a steady stream of James Brown, Junior Walker, Ray Charles, and at least a dozen artists in between.
Close to a decade ago, Henderson started playing brass instruments as a student at John C. Daniels School of International Communication, working his way from the trumpet to the trombone to the baritone to the tuba. By eighth grade, he thought that he was headed to Co-Op to be in their band, then under the direction of Patrick Smith and Matt Chasen. Then on his first day, his schedule had the school’s string concentration written on it instead. He trusted the process.
“It was crazy for me to go from playing instruments with my mouth to plucking with my fingers!” he said with an easy, open smile. But he stuck with it, excited to have a mentor in teacher Henry Lugo, a bassist who arrived at Co-Op in 2022. “It’s [the bass] like, the most important instrument in my opinion. It’s like the backbone.”
Henderson on the first day of school his sophomore year. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
Even as he doubled down on his studies in music, Henderson wasn’t initially drawn to jazz. But he was dedicated: he spent nearly every lunch period practicing in Lugo’s second-floor classroom, where strings play over the faint hum of College Street traffic.
When blisters began to erupt on his fingers (“my pointer finger gets a workout!” he said with a laugh), he soaked them in pickle juice—a tip from Lugo and Chasen—until they hardened into calluses. He let himself feel the music when he played, adding a few dance moves that are now just part of his signature artistic style.
Then his junior year, Lugo introduced him to the bassist and composer Christian McBride, a Philadelphia-raised musician whose work has led to multiple Grammy awards, and a 17-piece big band that can reliably bring a whole house to its feet. And for Henderson, whose influences range from Ray Charles to Lugo himself, something just clicked. In addition to New Haven’s All-City Orchestra, where he is the first bassist in six years, he began to add jazz numbers to his repertoire.
“He just has a joy for life in general, but his joy for music is so big,” said Lugo Wednesday, in a rare quiet moment between classes. “He has a real gift for the role of timekeeping and supporting others. There’s so much energy and forward motion in everything that he does.”
This Thursday and Friday, Henderson is bringing that joy to the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, where he is one of just two bassists in the entire state to play in the festival. For him, the opportunity has pushed him to grow his musical footprint, and also meet other young artists in the state. He’s already grown quite close with Elijah Spikes, a drummer based in Middletown who he met at CMEA regionals earlier this year.
That’s part of the point. Often—and despite the fact that the state is relatively small—students across different Connecticut towns and cities may not have the chance to meet, unless an extracurricular activity brings them together. When they do, they’re able to learn from each other, a skill that may help prepare Henderson for his studies in college in the fall. Currently, he hopes to attend Western Connecticut State University for music performance.
“It feels good [to play],” Henderson said. “It feels like my bass is making a sentence for me and I’m taking to the rest of the instruments.”
Nadia Okwuosa: "Being in All-State always feels like an opportunity and a blessing, but I also always felt like I belonged there." Lucy Gellman Photo.
Okwuosa, who will likely attend WestConn or the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, echoed that enthusiasm Wednesday morning, as she slipped out of choir rehearsal for an interview. For weeks, she’s been looking forward to singing with other students from around the state, and working with conductor Arreon A. Harley-Emerson, an assistant professor at Penn State who is the president and CEO of the arts agency Equity Sings.
Like Henderson, Okwuosa grew up surrounded by music, in a home where Maxwell, Erykah Badu and early Beyoncé set a soundtrack to her childhood (“I basically came out singing,” she said). Before long, music became both a source of quiet strength, a safe space for her to hop into whether she was at home, or navigating something at school.
“Singing just brings me comfort,” she said. “I’m generally always singing. People at school think of me as quiet, but when I sing, I’m the most extroverted.”
When Okwuosa arrived at Co-Op, former Choir Director Harriett Alfred took her under her wing, mentoring her until she retired in June 2025. Her freshman and sophomore year, she joined the All-City Choir, part of Music In The Schools that helped prepare her for events like CMEA’s festivals. Then last year, she took a beat, and made the decision to join the Yale Camerata, where she sings with Alfred and Jaminda Blackmon, Co-Op’s new choir director, every Tuesday after school.
So when Blackmon suggested CMEA’s Regional Festival, a prerequisite for the All-State Festival, she felt ready again. Senior year is “a lot,” she said—she’s had to stay on top of her coursework, auditions, and a growing repertoire of music while also applying to college, preparing for concerts, and dreaming up a capstone project—but singing is also what’s getting her through it. That, and it was just instinctively right.
“Being in All-State always feels like an opportunity and a blessing, but I also always felt like I belonged there,” she said. Even when school was hard, “it always felt like I was supposed to be there.”
“Choir,” she added, “is the reason I come to school.”
Back in Blackmon’s classroom during a free period, it was easy to see why. As Blackmon sat down at the piano, Okwuosa ran through “Joyful, Joyful,” her voice delicate but strong, rising as a few of her peers trickled in. The piece isn’t for CMEA—it’s part of the choir’s upcoming concert on April 7. Okwuosa wants to make sure she’s just as prepared for that, too.
“I’m so excited. So excited,” Blackmon said, taking a beat to reflect on Okwuosa’s path to Hartford. Outside of school, she works with Okwuosa in her personal voice studio. “It feels great to have Nadia go and represent the choir. I hope she knows how proud I am of her. She’s incredible.”