Story and photo submitted by Yavapai college
Professor and Faculty Program Director for Performing Arts at Yavapai College Christopher Tenney has a long track record with musical training and the performing arts. He performed and toured nationally and internationally with The Tucson Boys Chorus starting at the age of 8.
He received highest honors in his graduate studies, graduating with a master’s degree in music education from Boston University, where he currently is in his final semester of earning his Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Education.
Tenney started teaching at Yavapai College in 2016, but he’d visited previously.
“I first became familiar with Yavapai College while attending an event here as choir director of Chino Valley High School in 2009,” Tenney says. “I was immediately impressed by the facilities and the scope of the program, and I remember thinking that it was a place doing something special. That initial impression stayed with me.”
At Yavapai College, Tenney mentors music and theater faculty and students seeking a music degree. He teaches music theory courses, directs the symphonic band and several jazz ensembles. His position takes him across the state in a clinician/recruiting capacity, and his student-led jazz combo performs for hundreds of high school students each year.
As a conductor, Tenney has worked with Yavapai College’s musical theater department to music direct and conduct the pit orchestra for several large-scale musicals, including Fiddler on the Roof (2025), Anastasia (2024), Chicago (2022), A Christmas Carol (2018) and White Christmas (2017).
Tenney says one of the most rewarding aspects of his job “is working with a genuinely diverse student body, particularly seeing adult learners and traditional-age students making music together. That intergenerational collaboration creates a depth of musical and personal growth that is really special and increasingly rare.”
Tenney spent five years as the director of bands at Bradshaw Mountain High School in Prescott Valley, receiving multiple excellent and superior awards. He also has served as the Arizona Band and Orchestra Director’s Association (ABODA) Northwest Region Band chairperson and site host, and as site host and guest conductor for the Northern Arizona Band, Choi, and Orchestra Festival (NABCOF). He was recently elected as the vice president of the Yavapai Jazz Institute, a nonprofit committed to rural jazz education.
The performing arts degrees at Yavapai College prepare students for a wide range of pathways, Tenney says. They go on to work as performers, educators, composers, therapists, technicians and arts advocates, among other roles. Even for those who pursue careers outside the arts, the discipline, creativity and collaboration developed through music study are deeply nourishing.
“Music brings people together across backgrounds, experiences and generations, and that sense of community is at the heart of why the subject matters.”
Tenney says he and his colleagues offer almost the same number of ensembles as a major university.
“The combination of artistic rigor, accessibility and community focus makes this a truly meaningful place to teach and create.”
