Junior Jenna Stenberg was named Greenhill’s Artist of the Week on Nov. 14 for her work in Greenhill Singers and for her leading role as Evie in this years musical production of Disney’s “Descendants.”

Stenberg’s interest for singing began at a young age, encouraged by her grandmother, who always told her she had a beautiful voice. Although she struggled with stage fright growing up, she found the courage to start in her church choir, eventually singing solos and gaining confidence with each performance.

“I started singing in church choir but like solos and stuff like that, I never really wanted to keep pursuing it,” Stenberg said.

Stenberg said her confidence began to grow in eighth grade when she joined the choir under former Greenhill Choir Director Lucik Aprahamian. She also joined a enrolled in a small stage play class taught by Aprahamian, helping her become more comfortable performing.

“I’m going to try to work through the stage fright and keep going,” said Stenberg.

With encouragement from her family, Stenberg auditioned for the school play her freshman year, where she received a role as an understudy.

“I got to go on and perform and it was so fun. It was, like, top 10 moments. It was awesome,” Stenberg said. “And after that I said, I want to keep doing this, and I want to keep getting better.”

This year, Stenberg landed her first lead role in “Descendants”. She said she is thankful for the opportunity and dedicated significant time to preparing for the performance.

“Jenna is an amazing, first of all, just an amazing artist,” Upper School Arts Department Chair Leann Burns said. “You know, vocally, she’s incredibly talented.  Jenna even got ranked in All-Region and All-State Choir and that hasn’t happened at the school in like, a significant amount of time.”

Stenberg was the highest-ranked Greenhill singer in both All-Region and All-State competitions.

“She’s just made really huge strides over the last year,” choir teacher Espiritu Emmanuel said. “We wanted to honor her for making the all-region choir and also making the all state choir and being the highest ranke.”

Emmanuel explained that Stenberg is a model student with a positive attitude and strong musical talent, influencing her peers.

“I know I’m not going to be the best at everything that I do, because I do so many different things. But I try to just keep working on the things that I’m not the best at in every separate area,” Stenberg said.

Stenberg, who also participates in theater, choir and field hockey, said being recognized as Artist of the Week reminded her of how far she’d come.

“There’s always going to be people that believe in you, and there’s always going to be people that have something bad to say or can do it better than you. So, you just gotta know those things are true and keep moving,” Stenberg said.