Southwest Christian Academy<\/a> for about three years. Henderson taught choral music and directed the children\u2019s choir for students in first through eighth grades.<\/p>\n\u201cThey loved me, and I liked them,\u201d Henderson says about his former pupils.<\/p>\n
The opportunity at St. Martin\u2019s came along when Henderson found out that the East Dallas mainstay was looking for a new pianist after its former one passed away. He won the gig after auditioning for the role. <\/p>\n
\u201cI liked the place, the room,\u201d he says. \u201cThey had a grand piano; that made a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henderson has been performing at St. Martin\u2019s since around the turn of the century at both the restaurant\u2019s former location and its current one in Old East Dallas. He is one of three pianists (others are Alexis Lugo and Robert Brown) at St. Martin\u2019s and plays Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can play what I want to play,\u201d he says about his role. \u201cThe people are nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
He performs all kinds of music, like pop, religious, classical and tunes from movies and Broadway, but not country. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to have strings,\u201d he says of that genre. But even if he had accompaniment, he still wouldn\u2019t be interested. <\/p>\n
St. Martin\u2019s diners will make requests of Henderson on a regular basis, which he\u2019ll generally do if he knows the song.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he doesn\u2019t know it, just play it for him on YouTube or something because he plays by hearing,\u201d says Omid Haftlang, one of St. Martin\u2019s operators. \u201cAnd they\u2019re just so fascinated by that. \u2026 They go to YouTube, play it and then he gets it and plays it for them immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The caveat here is that Henderson also has to want to play the song. The music has to meet the moment, he says. People make plans in advance to have dinner at St. Martin\u2019s, and the tunes are part of what makes the evening special. <\/p>\n
Henderson knows he\u2019s appreciated because the same people keep coming back to St. Martin\u2019s to hear him play. He says some diners won\u2019t make a reservation unless they know he\u2019ll be there. <\/p>\n
Today, he also plays and directs the choir at Lee Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in southern Dallas on three Sundays each month. He continues this work because it\u2019s his act of service. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were raised to help people,\u201d Henderson says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey gave me lessons throughout elementary school and high school,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t get a piano until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,139717,139718,139719,139720,139721,139722],"class_list":["post-398020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-jeannie-terilli","tag-john-solly","tag-lewis-henderson-ii","tag-omid-haftlang","tag-st-martins","tag-terillis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}