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John Chenault is an educator, writer, poet, playwright, and librettist. He is the author of two poetry collections, Blue Blackness (1969), and The Invisible Man Returns (1992)), and his work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies. He also has written for magazines and newspapers, and was a columnist and section editor for Artrage Magazine in London, England.
Chenault, a Cincinnati native, began his performing arts career in 1967 with the New Theater of Cincinnati. From "techie" to actor, playwright, and producer, he has been involved in dozens of productions behind and on the stage. His playwriting credits include: Blood Ritual, Stolen Moments, The X-periment, and Young Men Grow Older, a television drama that received the National Conference of Christian and Jews Brotherhood Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Community Television.
During the late 1960s Chenault studied African and Afro-Cuban percussion with Flash Ford and Alfred Smith, and performed with the Black Arts Ensemble (BAS). The percussion group Sunship, which he co-founded with Fahali Igbo, Matt Gibson, Naim Singleton, and Steve Neil in 1972, grew out of the BAS. From 1974-76 he continued his music studies at Antioch College with musicologist and composer Karl Berger. In 1977 he formed the Zamani Band in Washington, D.C with Joseph Kennedy and Phil Osborn.
Chenault also has been an avid researcher and lecturer in the field of Africana Studies. He has taught African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, Beacon College, and Washington International College, where he was executive dean (1978-1982). He currently is an assistant professor at the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library at the University of Louisville, and a lecturer in the Pan African Studies Department in the U of L College of Arts & Sciences.
Chenault met bassist/composer Frank Proto in 1993 and began a successful partnership that has produced a series of compositions and recordings for orchestra, jazz band and chamber ensemble. They have received commissions from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, American Composers Forum, University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM), International Society of Bassists, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Their work has been performed throughout the U.S., and in Canada, England, Germany and France. With the premiere of their first opera, Shadowboxer, by the Opera Studio of the University of Maryland School of Music, they continue to explore and redefine the ways in which music and words can combine in performance.