Biography

Jerry Henry founder and owner of Orchestra Triage Inc. has been a public school string and studio violin and viola
teacher for most of the past 27 years. His teaching resume includes two years of team teaching beginning
orchestra in Edinburg, Texas, seven years teaching grades 4-12 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa teaching at
Washington High School, Franklin Junior High and several associated elementary schools, two years of
teaching English in Qingdao, China, and eight years as the director of orchestras for the Linn-Mar
Community School District in Marion, Iowa teaching grades 5-12. In 2008 he finished his sixth year as a
teacher with the Davenport Community Schools working at both North
High School, and Wood Intermediate School, and he is now
running his own consulting business for public
school orchestra programs and teachers.

Jerry has worked with string education majors at Coe College
and was an adjunct professor at the University of Dubuque.
He was honored as an outstanding high school teacher by
the University of California at San Diego in 2000, and was
in the Who’s Who of American teachers in 2001. He
received the award as ASTA with NSOA State of Iowa
string teacher of the year for the 2001school year and
was recently inducted into the Washington High
School Performing Arts Hall of Fame and is the
President of the Iowa String Teachers Association.

He has been active as a clinician, guest director, and adjudicator in Iowa and Illinois and has been a contributor to the Iowa String Teachers journal. Throughout his career he has maintained a consistent schedule of performance and is presently a member of Orchestra Iowa, the acting concertmaster of the Clinton Symphony, and the 2nd violinist and part time violist in QUARTRIO, a flexible quartet from the Clinton and Quad Cities corridor. He graduated from Wartburg College in 1980 with a BME and received his Masters degree in Education from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma in 1981. He received his MBA from the University of Iowa in 2001.

Most recently Jerry has become an advocate and presenter on string teaching in the public schools. He will present at his third striaght ASTA national convention in Providence in 2013 and at the Midwest Band and Orchestra convention in Chicago in December, 2012. He has presented at the Minnesota state music educators convention, the Iowa state music educators convention as well as the Iowa String Teachers convention, and to the State School Boards of Iowa. He has been seated on panels at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, and at the State Arts Mentoring forum in Ames, IA.

Jerry has a remarkable record of building and rebuilding orchestra programs. He has recently completed putting his ideas and teaching concepts into a book entitled, "Orchestra Triage, A Philosophy for Classroom Orchestra Teachers and Methods to Match". He has an unmatched ability to see and assess the needs and deficiencies of string programs and individual teachers and suggest workable ways to fix those problems.