SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2018
VOLUME SIX NUMBER ONE
SONNY ROLLINS
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
TEDDY WILSON
(July 14-20)
GEORGE WALKER
(July 21-27)
BILLY STRAYHORN
(July 28-August 3)
LAURYN HILL
LEROY JENKINS
(August 4-10)LAURYN HILL
(August 11-17)
JOHN HICKS
(August 18-24)
(August 18-24)
ANTHONY DAVIS
(August 25-31)
RON MILES
(September 1-7)
RON MILES
(September 1-7)
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
(September 8-14)
NNENNA FREELON
(September 15-21)
KENNY DORHAM
(September 22-28)
FATS WALLER
(September 29-October 5)Nnenna Freelon
(b. July 28, 1954)
Artist Biography by Thom Jurek
In 1995 she signed to Concord (where she was granted
far more artistic control over her recordings). She released her first
album for the label, Shaking Free, in 1996; for it she received her first Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Maiden Voyage,
released in 1998, was also nominated for Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal
Performance; it displayed her interest in the role of women in music and
society as expressed through her sometimes radical but always elegant
interpretations of pop and folk songs as well as jazz standards. In
2000, Freelon branched out. She made her acting debut in the feature film What Women Want and released her first self-produced set, Soulcall.
The album garnered her two Grammy nominations: one for Best Jazz Vocal
Album and another for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocal
for her interpretation of the standard "Button Up Your Overcoat." In
2002 she released Tales of Wonder: Celebrating Stevie Wonder,
a tribute recording of songs written by, and associated with, the
Motown great, and as a reward, received another Grammy nomination for
Best Jazz Vocal Album. She recorded her first live album in 2005, and
followed it with her radical Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday in 2006; this album is wildly refreshing for the way in which Freelon took great liberties with songs associated with Holiday,
reinterpreting them in contemporary settings and in her own bold image.
And while some jazz critics took notable exception to messing with Lady Day, Freelon
was nonetheless honored by the RIAA with another Grammy nomination for
Best Jazz Vocal Album. In 2008, she appeared as the only vocalist on the
Monterey Jazz Festival: 50th Anniversary All-Stars album, fronting a band that starred Benny Green, James Moody, Terence Blanchard, Kendrick Scott, and Derrick Hodge. In 2010, Ms. Freelon released her seventh Concord album, Homefree.
Nnenna Freelon
Six-time GRAMMY® Award-nominee Nnenna Freelon has earned a
well-deserved reputation as a compelling and captivating live performer,
most receontly in 2007 on In Performance At The White House to
celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
At the 43rd annual GRAMMY Awards telecast from Los Angeles, she
inspired an enthusiastic standing ovation from 20,000 music-industry
insiders and celebrities when she took to the stage. Prior to that
stirring appearance, Freelon’s performances for the legendary Julie
Andrews at the Society of Singers’ “Ella Awards,” Variety’s The
Children’s Charity (as a featured vocalist at the Stephen Sondheim
Tribute at Carnegie Hall), Jerry Lewis’ Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy
Telethon and at the most famous jazz festivals around the globe have all
been rousing successes. No wonder--for anyone who has heard and seen
Freelon sing knows she is a skillful interpreter of even the most
familiar chestnuts.
On her Grammy-nominated (for Best Jazz Vocal
Performance) release, Blueprint Of A Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday,
Freelon pays tribute to the quintessential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday.
As inventive as ever, Freelon turns these Holiday-associated songs and
fulfills Billie Holiday’s message to all artists: “No two people on
earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way with music or it isn’t
music.” With her own band, and with Ronald K. brown & EVIDENCE,
Freelon and Brown turn this inot a multi-media music and dance offering
unlike any show previously seen! Freelon is a winner of both the Billie
Holiday Award from the prestigious Academie du Jazz and this tribute
brings her to a heartfelt source of inspiration for her artistry and
dedication to the music and the power it possesses in education and art.
On
her fifth, and previous, Concord Records release, Live (CCD-2184),
Nnenna Freelon brings all of her alluring talents to bear. The result is
a beguiling and intimate achievement. Recorded at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC, on February 21 and 22, 2003, Live marks a decade-long
recording career for Freelon, as well as 20-years on the road.
It
has certainly been a heady decade for Freelon. In addition to five
GRAMMY nominations while on the Concord label, Freelon also made her
feature film debut in the Mel Gibson hit, What Women Want, and sang a
remake of Sinatra’s classic, “Fly Me To The Moon” for The Visit,
starring Billy Dee Williams. She is also a winner of the Eubie Blake
Award, and has twice been nominated for the “Lady of Soul” Soul Train
Award. What’s more, Freelon has performed and toured with a veritable
who’s who in jazz, from Ray Charles and Ellis Marsalis to Al Jarreau and
George Benson, among many others.
Born and raised in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Freelon received her undergraduate degree from Simmons
College in Boston. Her parents and singing in the church gave the singer
her first exposure to the arts--especially to the art of jazz. Her
father’s playing Count Basie recordings and her mother’s active
involvement in their church led Freelon to an appreciation of all music
which she eventually pursued as a career in jazz. All the while, Freelon
has cherished and held dear her two most important lifetime roles--wife
and mother. Her husband Phil Freelon is an accomplished award-winning
architect, his firm The Freelon Group based in North Carolina. Mother of
three, Freelon has led by example--follow your dreams, dedicate
yourself, and work hard in all you do.
Now with nine recordings to
her name, Freelon’s explored the roles of vocalist, entertainer,
composer, educator, arranger, and producer. “We continue to
evolve--artists have hungry minds and hearts, so we’re always working on
the next thing--but I felt it was just time to stop, take a breath, and
enjoy! I’ve grown a lot, both musically and spiritually, on this
journey. Before, many things were ‘first’ experiences, but now I’m going
back to some of the same festivals and clubs, and realizing I am happy
and content where I am. It’s great to see all the awards and career
milestones building up,” she admits, “but it’s even nicer to realize
people are coming to the shows and saying, ‘I saw you back in ’95!’ I’ve
made a lot of friends on the road.”
An accomplished singer,
composer, producer, and arranger (as well as budding actress), Freelon
has dedicated herself to educating young people, both musicians and
non-musicians. She toured the United States for four years as the
National Spokesperson for Partners In Education. Her master classes and
workshops, from “Sound Sculpture” to the ground-breaking “Babysong,”
teach adults and children that you too can change the world--even one
person at a time--but it takes dedication and perseverance, the
substance of Nnenna’s educational activities. The messages in Nnenna’s
activities go far beyond technique. Her messages reach into the very
soul of the person listening and encourage, in fact motivates them,
toward constructive change and to create positive energy.
With her
anthem “One Child At A Time” found on her Soulcall recording, Freelon
took on the task of fund-raising and bringing greater attention to the
needs of children in education through mentoring and the arts. It has
become one of the most sought-after songs for its lyrics to its music
and has been used by countless organizations including local, regional
and national groups including the United Way.
Earning consistently
rave reviews from even the toughest of jazz critics and with her global
fan base growing, Freelon is far from done, however. In fact, as she
enters a new recording decade, one thing is certain--Nnenna Freelon is a
true original!
Out of the Spin Cycle : Nnenna Freelon felt trapped, drowning in diapers, until she discovered jazz and claimed a voice that has taken her way past the laundry cart.
It was all the diapers that did it.
Nnenna Freelon was at home in North Carolina in 1983 minding her three small children when she realized: This is it. Laundry, Pop-Tarts, TV. This is all I'll know.
Her world closing in and her architect husband at work, she grew angry, even bitter. She'd grown up, after all, with so many gifts: a church choir singing voice, the looks of a model and brains that would take her through college and a promising career in hospital administration.
She asked herself: "What can I do to get beyond the toddlers? What can I do to keep myself alive?"
Return to the local hospital? No.
Pursue a graduate degree in the University of North Carolina program to which she'd previously been admitted? No.
Jazz music. Yes: Jazz.
Not that Nnenna Freelon really knew anything about jazz.
"I saw an ad for a six-week workshop run by my local arts council here in Durham," she says in a telephone interview. "I went. I took Pierce, my son, along every Wednesday night, and it turned out I lived for those Wednesday nights. I was a thirsty flower soaking up all this new energy."
There can be little question that back then, in her late 20s in 1983, Nnenna Freelon was just waiting to happen, though it wouldn't be overnight.
Her first CD, titled "Nnenna Freelon," was released in 1992 and earned a Grammy nomination, largely on the strength of her stunning vocal rendition and string arrangement of "Stella by Starlight." This was followed a year later by a spare trio-backed CD titled "Heritage," a collection of classic ballads from the jazz songbook with classic piano stylings by Kenny Barron.
Then, last summer, for her third Columbia-label outing, Freelon finally got her way, finally got her laundry-room prayer answered: a CD of her original songs titled "Listen."
The jazz world has. So, too, will Los Angeles fans starting Tuesday, when she opens a six-night engagement at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. Freelon's agile vocal placements, warmed subtly by a blues inflection but rendered formally by ultra-precise enunciation of lyrics, are at once classic and modern, warm and cool, intimate and reflective. Her original songs, in particular, bear the considerable force of her life concerns, chief among them the ability to stick to one's convictions and weave threads of everyday wishes into a single, guiding dream.
Freelon is very happy about this turn of events in her life. So is her husband, Phil, whom she credits with bluntly challenging her to rise to her 1983 anger and find a way out.
"My marriage was at stake. My life was at stake," Freelon says. "I was charged with negative energy, being eaten alive by it, and here was Phil saying: 'You can't use the kids or the family as an excuse. You have choices. Find them.' "
She pauses.
"Of course, at the time, I didn't hear that as support. I heard it as someone telling a drowning person, 'Hey, swim ashore.' "
It would be wrong to suggest that Nnenna Freelon picked a jazz career from the Yellow Pages, took a few lessons and hopped onstage. Jazz music does not work that way. Freelon, who once listened happily to War and Chicago and confesses that "I did not have ears enough to understand Betty Carter at all," is the first to say so.
But music was always in her childhood home in Cambridge, Mass. Her father, a TV repairman from North Carolina, and mother, a beautician from Texarkana, Tex., "brought their country traditions and sense of community with them, and so I sang in the church," Freelon says.
Young Nnenna's voice immediately stood out. The word gift was bantered about when she'd sing.
Still, in the black Southern sensibility of her home, such gifts were viewed, Freelon says, as "community property, as something that doesn't belong to you." Neighbors and church members would ask for Nnenna's singing at special affairs, and her parents always disallowed payment to her for something "you honor as a service to the community."
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/75837/nnenna-freelon-honors-stevie-wonder
Nnenna Freelon Honors Stevie Wonder
The fact that song stylist Nnenna Freelon's 10-year recording career is
moving into high gear seems indisputable. With five Grammy Award
nominations to her credit and an increasingly hectic touring schedule, the
North Carolina-based singer is preparing for the June 11 release of her
seventh album, "Tales of Wonder," via Concord.
Consisting
entirely of songs from the catalog of Stevie Wonder, the 12-track set
has the makings of a mainstream breakthrough for Freelon. "I grew up
with Stevie's music," she explains. "I was lucky because my parents
exposed me to Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Charlie
Parker, and other jazz greats. At the same time, the music of Motown --
Earth, Wind & Fire; the Stylistics; Tower of Power -- that's what I
claimed, that's also what I listened to. Stevie truly had his pulse on
our generation, and his music was like the soundtrack for the lives of
so many of us."
No stranger to Wonder's
music, Freelon has recorded one of the legendary artist's songs on each
of her previous albums for Concord, as well as her three early-'90s
sets for Columbia. Freelon says choosing from more than 300 Wonder songs
was no easy task.
Nnenna Freelon was at home in North Carolina in 1983 minding her three small children when she realized: This is it. Laundry, Pop-Tarts, TV. This is all I'll know.
Her world closing in and her architect husband at work, she grew angry, even bitter. She'd grown up, after all, with so many gifts: a church choir singing voice, the looks of a model and brains that would take her through college and a promising career in hospital administration.
She asked herself: "What can I do to get beyond the toddlers? What can I do to keep myself alive?"
Return to the local hospital? No.
Pursue a graduate degree in the University of North Carolina program to which she'd previously been admitted? No.
Jazz music. Yes: Jazz.
Not that Nnenna Freelon really knew anything about jazz.
"I saw an ad for a six-week workshop run by my local arts council here in Durham," she says in a telephone interview. "I went. I took Pierce, my son, along every Wednesday night, and it turned out I lived for those Wednesday nights. I was a thirsty flower soaking up all this new energy."
There can be little question that back then, in her late 20s in 1983, Nnenna Freelon was just waiting to happen, though it wouldn't be overnight.
Her first CD, titled "Nnenna Freelon," was released in 1992 and earned a Grammy nomination, largely on the strength of her stunning vocal rendition and string arrangement of "Stella by Starlight." This was followed a year later by a spare trio-backed CD titled "Heritage," a collection of classic ballads from the jazz songbook with classic piano stylings by Kenny Barron.
Then, last summer, for her third Columbia-label outing, Freelon finally got her way, finally got her laundry-room prayer answered: a CD of her original songs titled "Listen."
The jazz world has. So, too, will Los Angeles fans starting Tuesday, when she opens a six-night engagement at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. Freelon's agile vocal placements, warmed subtly by a blues inflection but rendered formally by ultra-precise enunciation of lyrics, are at once classic and modern, warm and cool, intimate and reflective. Her original songs, in particular, bear the considerable force of her life concerns, chief among them the ability to stick to one's convictions and weave threads of everyday wishes into a single, guiding dream.
Freelon is very happy about this turn of events in her life. So is her husband, Phil, whom she credits with bluntly challenging her to rise to her 1983 anger and find a way out.
"My marriage was at stake. My life was at stake," Freelon says. "I was charged with negative energy, being eaten alive by it, and here was Phil saying: 'You can't use the kids or the family as an excuse. You have choices. Find them.' "
She pauses.
"Of course, at the time, I didn't hear that as support. I heard it as someone telling a drowning person, 'Hey, swim ashore.' "
It would be wrong to suggest that Nnenna Freelon picked a jazz career from the Yellow Pages, took a few lessons and hopped onstage. Jazz music does not work that way. Freelon, who once listened happily to War and Chicago and confesses that "I did not have ears enough to understand Betty Carter at all," is the first to say so.
But music was always in her childhood home in Cambridge, Mass. Her father, a TV repairman from North Carolina, and mother, a beautician from Texarkana, Tex., "brought their country traditions and sense of community with them, and so I sang in the church," Freelon says.
Young Nnenna's voice immediately stood out. The word gift was bantered about when she'd sing.
Still, in the black Southern sensibility of her home, such gifts were viewed, Freelon says, as "community property, as something that doesn't belong to you." Neighbors and church members would ask for Nnenna's singing at special affairs, and her parents always disallowed payment to her for something "you honor as a service to the community."
Growing
up thus had its dualities for Freelon, raised with rural Southern
values amid America's oldest New England academic community. She would
attend Simmons College in Boston before heading south to North Carolina
for graduate school.
Now, her ancestral North Carolina feels like home, or "where I'm from," Freelon says.
But it was back in the Cambridge house that her father had played classic jazz recordings of Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington and others. Freelon ignored those recordings in favor of pop music.
On her first Wednesday night at the Durham jazz workshop, however, Freelon found she knew the chord changes to the jazz standards being played--a fact that both delighted and haunted her.
"I called my dad and asked, 'How come I know this music?' " she recalls. "And he says, 'Because it was in your face all along.' "
The discovery of such complete aural memory--the ear's analogue to photographic memory--helps explain Freelon's successful and rare adulthood dive into a music that is complex and demanding both emotionally and intellectually.
Now, her ancestral North Carolina feels like home, or "where I'm from," Freelon says.
But it was back in the Cambridge house that her father had played classic jazz recordings of Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington and others. Freelon ignored those recordings in favor of pop music.
On her first Wednesday night at the Durham jazz workshop, however, Freelon found she knew the chord changes to the jazz standards being played--a fact that both delighted and haunted her.
"I called my dad and asked, 'How come I know this music?' " she recalls. "And he says, 'Because it was in your face all along.' "
The discovery of such complete aural memory--the ear's analogue to photographic memory--helps explain Freelon's successful and rare adulthood dive into a music that is complex and demanding both emotionally and intellectually.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/75837/nnenna-freelon-honors-stevie-wonder
Nnenna Freelon Honors Stevie Wonder
The fact that song stylist Nnenna Freelon's 10-year recording career is
moving into high gear seems indisputable. With five Grammy Award
nominations to her credit and an increasingly hectic touring schedule, the
North Carolina-based singer is preparing for the June 11 release of her
seventh album, "Tales of Wonder," via Concord.
Consisting
entirely of songs from the catalog of Stevie Wonder, the 12-track set
has the makings of a mainstream breakthrough for Freelon. "I grew up
with Stevie's music," she explains. "I was lucky because my parents
exposed me to Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Charlie
Parker, and other jazz greats. At the same time, the music of Motown --
Earth, Wind & Fire; the Stylistics; Tower of Power -- that's what I
claimed, that's also what I listened to. Stevie truly had his pulse on
our generation, and his music was like the soundtrack for the lives of
so many of us."
No stranger to Wonder's
music, Freelon has recorded one of the legendary artist's songs on each
of her previous albums for Concord, as well as her three early-'90s
sets for Columbia. Freelon says choosing from more than 300 Wonder songs
was no easy task."Once we decided to do this album, I started researching his work about a year ago. I picked songs from each era of his career, and I included some absolute personal favorites-along with a few surprises."
A prime example, the little-known "Black Orchid" (from Wonder's 1979 set "Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants"), is sandwiched between Freelon's thoughtful interpretation of "Tears of a Clown" -- a Wonder-penned 1970 hit for Smokey Robinson & the Miracles -- and Wonder's own smash "My Cherie Amour." The latter song, Freelon says, "was where I began to recognize Stevie's work."
With Freelon's masterful reading of such classics as "Superstition" and "All in Love Is Fair," along with a new musical slant on "Until You Come Back to Me" (a 1974 hit for Aretha Franklin), "Tales of Wonder" has the ingredients for taking Freelon to a new level beyond the jazz arena.
Excerpted from the May 11, 2002, issue of Billboard. The full original text of the article is available in the Billboard.com members section.
http://www.compulsivereader.com/2011/04/14/the-triumph-of-music-nnenna-freelon-homefree/
The Triumph of Music: Nnenna Freelon, Homefree
Nnenna Freelon, Homefree
Produced by Nnenna Freelon and Nick Phillips
Executive Producer: Ed Keane
Concord Music Group, 2010
“There truly is no place like home. The road will always beckon but for now, come in, sit down, take off your shoes…welcome home.”
--Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna Freelon’s voice is like a bird in flight, focused, with energy, a sharp precision; and she has a horn-like enunciation, and a sometimes mellow huskiness; and in the Ravel piece, “The Lamp is Low,” a song of intimacy and seduction, Nnenna Freelon, an artistic child of Ella Fitzgerald, a niece of Billie Holiday, a cousin of Dianne Reeves and Dee Dee Bridgewater, is playfully insinuating. It is a nice beginning for her album, Homefree: it is a promise of pleasure.
Nnenna Freelon has command of her instrument, her voice, and she is confident and earthy, with great energy, in “I Feel Pretty,” making the Bernstein-Sondheim song one of self-reflection rather than vanity: love has been transforming. The flugelhorn solo is one of melodic curls, smoky curls; and the band has significant vitality. “The Very Thought of You” is a Ray Noble song of contemplative appreciation; and in it, aware, sensual, emotive, Freelon has the kind of authority that is rooted in experience and experiment, the kind that cannot be faked. The tenor saxophone music of Ira Wiggins is both forceful and rich, and there are little runs on the piano by Brandon McCune. Freelon’s voice can be grainy or pristine in the “Theme from Valley of the Dolls,” a composition by Andre and Dory Previn about existence, about feeling adrift and confused and wanting to go home. It is a thoughtful theme, previously performed by Dionne Warwick, a singer whose musical elegance has no pretension, a verve that knows no artificiality, excess, or vulgarity. Freelon’s performance of it is one more demonstration that jazz is a music that lays claim to diverse repertoire. Experience, values, and vision are embodied in language, the language of songs, of literature, of daily use; and if our language is limited, it may circumscribe what we can know, and what we choose. The songs that have become standards, the kind of songs that Freelon sings, embody principles. Freelon takes on Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile,” a composition that could provide spiritual support or an entertainer’s advice—or both; and, which it is depends on interpretation, and for me Freelon does not go deeply enough into it to make it genuinely spiritual.
“With each performance I’ve learned a little bit more about what it means to be truly at home with the music and with myself,” claims singer Nnenna Freelon, who has performed in Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the White House and many other venues, in the notes for the album Homefree. Her albums include Nnenna Freelon, Heritage, Shaking Free, Listen, Maiden Voyage, Soulcall, Tales of Wonder, Live, Blueprint of a Lady, and Better Than Anything. The Homefree collection was recorded in North Carolina, Nnenna Freelon’s home for almost thirty years, and it has the participation of musicians Nnenna Freelon respects and trusts, musicians she has collaborated with for years: her band, pianist Brandon McCune, drummer Kinah Ayah, percussionist Beverly Botsford, and bassist Wayne Batchelor, are helped by the flugelhorn of Ray Codrington, and Scott Sawyer’s guitar, Ira Wiggins’s saxophone, and John Brown’s bass. (Wiggins and Brown are not only musicians, they are the directors of college jazz studies; and Freelon has referred to her guest artists as heroes.) Around the time the Homefree recording was presented to the public, Freelon performed a concert in Rose Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, a concert attended by critic Nate Chinen of The New York Times, and Chinen called Freelon “a jazz singer of unstinting vivacity,” one who drew on the lessons of Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Lena Horne, and Billie Holiday, “without resorting to outright emulation” (Times, May 12, 2010). Yet, Nate Chinen, sounding a little peevish, faulted Freelon for not exploring emotion enough, and for the piety of certain patriotic song selections. Sometimes performers are criticized for paying too much attention to their effect on the audience, on entertainment; and sometimes for paying too much attention to technique, to artistry: what is fault may be a matter of taste. A few days after Chinen’s report, the Berklee College of Music professor Fred Bouchard delivered a considered but excited and somewhat slang-dripping review of Homefree on the dedicated jazz website All About Jazz, which has been acknowledging and evaluating the many productions in the jazz field for years. Bouchard concluded that “Freelon’s compelling, searching artistry never lets up, yet leaves you with more grins than furrowed brows, with more questions than answers” (All About Jazz, May 14, 2010).
I am not sure that the introduction of Homefree’s “You and the Night and the Music,” composed by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, is as dramatic as may be intended, but the remainder of the song has a reckless sultriness that creates a pillow for the lyrics’ questioning of fidelity. In Nnenna Freelon’s own “Cell Phone Blues,” direct communication, face to face, is desired, and it is clever, suggestive, with a firm groove, especially that of a blues guitar and percussion; and Freelon sings, “I’m looking for a lover on the friends and family plan.” I thought Freelon had written “Get Out of Town” when I heard it initially—her line readings of the Cole Porter tune are entrancing, and extraordinarily varied; in it, she is trying to end an intense relationship, one of attraction and excitement rather than compatibility. Her voice is beautiful, big, and bold in Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer’s “Skylark,” supported by the pathos and plucking and puttering of two bass players, John Brown and Wayne Batchelor. “The bass is the earth and I’m the wind that needs that earth beneath me,” Freelon has said.
Nnenna Freelon’s Homefree closes with two significant songs, the kind of ambitious and unifying gestures more singers might try: “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” written by John Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson, and “America the Beautiful,” written by Katherine Bates and Samuel Ward. Freelon’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is celebratory, though I have heard it sung mournfully; here, there is joy and pride in it, as it has been transformed by jazz, and her son Pierre’s rap—affirming ancestors and music as a connector—completes the piece, which brings together jazz and rap with the spiritual tradition. One can hear the poetry of the lyrics in Freelon’s interpretation of “America the Beautiful,” which bridges classical music and jazz (Tim Holley’s cello, especially, does that).
http://nnenna.com/biography/
Biography
Grammy Nominated Jazz Vocalist / Composer / Actress / Playwright
Six-time GRAMMY® Award nominee Nnenna Freelon has earned a well-deserved reputation as a compelling and captivating live performer. In 2014, Nnenna starred in the critically acclaimed show “Georgia on My Mind: Celebrating the Music of Ray Charles” at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Nnenna is no stranger to the music of the master singer - she toured with Ray Charles, as well as many other greatest jazz artists including Ellis Marsalis, Al Jarreau, George Benson, and others.She is particularly excited about her current venture as the writer, composer and producer of the original theatrical presentation of The Clothesline Muse, a devised theatrical work of dance, music, spoken word, vibrant art and projections. She is also one of the stars of the musical theater piece. The Clothesline Muse premiered at the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia in 2013 with a national tour underway in 2015. The production was accomplished with the assistance of her daughter, visual artist Maya Freelon-Asante and Kariamu Welsh, Chairman of Dance at Temple University. The play won a National Theater Project creation grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), a much sought after honor only awarded to six worthy recipients. The play has also been supported by the National Performance Network. The performances will be accompanied by a residency, that is, some kind of community outreach, in virtually every market. Some markets will also have special daytime performances for children.
The play explores the intergenerational relationship between Grandma Blu, played by Freelon, and her granddaughter Mary Mack, played by Cloteal Horne. The clothesline becomes a magical place where memories are shared and stories told. “The young Mary has little interest in the past,” explains Nnenna, “but discovers that there are more than just clean white sheets hanging ‘on the line’.” In addition to Horne and Freelon, The Clothesline Muse features a cast of five dancers and live original music composed by Freelon. This is not her first stint acting. Freelon made her feature film debut in What Women Want starring Mel Gibson.
Nnenna has always been respected as an artist and for her passion for education. In November 2011, The White House asked Freelon to headline the Asia Pacific Economic Summit for 300 Presidents, Premiers and Heads of State from around the world. This was on the heels of receiving the YWCA of North Carolina’s inaugural “Legend Award” for her outstanding artistry and her dedication to education.
Freelon has dedicated herself to educating young people, both musicians and non-musicians, and students of all ages. She toured the United States for four years as the National Spokesperson for Partners in Education. Her master classes and workshops, from “Sound Sculpture” to the ground-breaking “Babysong,” teach adults and children that you too can change the world –;;; even one person at a time. With her anthem “One Child at a Time” found on her “Soulcall” recording, Freelon took on the task of fundraising and bringing greater attention to the needs of children in education through mentoring and the arts. It has become a sought-after song by countless organizations including the United Way.
Recently, Nnenna triumphed in composer Laura Karpman’s undertaking of Langston Hughes’ “Ask Your Mama” at The Apollo Theater and at an astounding the Hollywood Bowl concert with opera superstar Jessye Norman and the indie phenom band The Roots. She also wowed audiences at SRO shows at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival with the Duke Ellington inspired “Dreaming The Duke,” with classical star Harolyn Blackwell and pop-jazz-crossover pianist Mike Garson.
Nnenna’s talent is not limited to performing. Her TV appearance on In Performance At the White House, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, led to the versatile songstress/composer having a featured song on the hit TV show Mad Men. That was followed by a new collaboration on tour with legendary guitarist Earl Klugh. In 2012 she had her first collaboration with legendary pianist Ramsey Lewis.
Honors and awards are nothing new for Nnenna. She was named a 2010 “Woman of Substance” by Bennett College for Woman, delivered the Keynote Address for the 2010 Arts Midwest Conference, and much more. Freelon is a winner of both the Billie Holiday Award from the prestigious Academie du Jazz and the Eubie Blake Award from the Cultural Crossroads Center in New York City. She was nominated twice as “Lady of Soul” by the Soul Train Awards.
At the 43rd annual GRAMMY Awards telecast from Los Angeles, she inspired an enthusiastic standing ovation from 20,000 music industry insiders and other celebrities when she took to the stage. She receives similar reaction for her ongoing concert, television and special event performances such as the prestigious headline spot for ActionAID, Sir Elton John’s International AIDS fundraiser.
Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Freelon received her undergraduate degree from Simmons College in Boston. Her parents and singing in the church gave the singer her first exposure to the arts –;; especially to the art of jazz. Her father played Count Basie recordings and her mother’s active involvement in their church led Freelon to an appreciation of all music. Ultimately she pursued a career in jazz in which she has excelled. All the while, Freelon has cherished and held dear her two most important lifetime roles; wife and mother. Her husband Phil Freelon is an award-winning architect based in North Carolina. As the mother of three, Freelon has led by example; follow your dreams, dedicate yourself, and work hard in all you do.
Her recording career has brought consistent respect and sales for the artist both for her solo albums and those on which she collaborates or is featured in duets. Nnenna Freelon has created a diverse and outstanding legacy from her creativity to her performances that have garnered an ever-growing fan base from audiences to leaders worldwide.
https://jazztimes.com/features/nnenna-freelon-overjoyed/
Nnenna Freelon: Overjoyed
Freelon has been traveling since 5 a.m. and now needs to squeeze her soundcheck into 20 minutes. She’s tired and hungry. She’s not happy with the microphone’s range. She senses that one of the monitors is too loud, and she’s a little too aware of the festival’s press rep hovering nearby, signaling that it’s time to depart for a live radio interview across town. Other, more divaesque artists would snap like sun-baked kindling. Not Freelon. Exhibiting the patience and perspicacity that have long been Freelon trademarks, she shrugs off the mounting frustrations with an easy, “Que sera sera” smile.
As dusk settles, the stormy weather seemingly at bay, she’s back on stage, diplomatically greeting the Canadian audience in both English and French. She launches into her 90-minute set with a gently effervescent version of Stevie Wonder’s somewhat obscure “Bird of Beauty,” lifted from her freshly minted labor of love, Tales of Wonder. The near-capacity crowd is polite, if not overly effusive. Among contemporary female vocalists, Freelon isn’t yet as familiar a figure as, say, Diana Krall or Dianne Reeves, and the assembled multitude is copping a wait-and-see attitude.
Perhaps tuning into their collective wariness, Freelon soars into a blistering rendition of Bill Loughborough’s “Better Than Anything” which, with its sly references to a dozen or so jazz giants, helps turn the tide. After a straightahead reading of Cole Porter’s “I Love You,” coupled with Freelon’s spicy oiling of the creaky Depression-era anthem “Button Up Your Overcoat,” she’s got ’em where she wants ’em, and is free to chart a more self-fulfilling course by serving up another half-dozen Wonder-inspired selections from Tales. As she tiptoes through the final verse of her hauntingly temperate treatment of “The Tears of a Clown,” a soft rain starts to fall. Cottoning to the moment’s sweet symmetry, some 6,000 Freelon converts are on their feet, ready, indeed eager, to embrace her daringly funky, hipster-meets-hip-hop version of “Body and Soul,” stomping for two encores, then wandering off into the now-starry night with proper appreciation for one of the most undervalued voices in modern jazz.
An hour later, Freelon’s stretched out on a sofa in the festival’s hospitality suite. The shoes are off, the wine is chilled and, despite having been up and running for 20 hours straight, she’s ready to talk about anything and everything. What becomes immediately evident is that Freelon is a rare blend of estimable qualities-smart as Oprah, sassy as Sarah Vaughan (to whom she’s been endlessly compared), striking as Phylicia Rashad and as refreshingly self-aware as only a true risk-taker can be.
She bristles at the suggestion that she was a late bloomer. It did, however, especially by ageist music industry standards, take a while for Freelon to find her professional voice. Born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., she says her “calling” came at age seven while performing “Amazing Grace” at the Union Baptist Church. But the call went long unheeded. Though blessed with progressive parents who, she says, “dragged my brother and sister and me kicking and screaming to every cultural event going,” there was no familial support for fledgling show business aspirations. “I don’t think they ever saw it as something you could do as a career,” she muses. “If, especially with my mother, you were singing for the Lord, that was OK. Secular expression she was way less comfortable with. She never put me down for it, but made it clear that there was a big difference between singing ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ with your girlfriends and deciding you want to go to Detroit to be like the Supremes.”
Accepting of her parents’ unwillingness to send her to music school, Freelon opted instead to focus on “other talents. I could write. I could speak well. And they seemed like skills that could be developed so that I could make a nice living and support myself,” she says.
Ultimately relocating to Durham, N.C., and building a comfortable life for herself as a wife, mother and health-care administrator, she was, nonetheless, “unhappy and confused. I wasn’t sure why, because everything around me-the three healthy children, the dog, the cat, the station wagon, the devoted husband, the nice house, the whole bit-was what I said I wanted, but I didn’t feel good inside.”
By the late ’80s Freelon was, she admits, “really driving everybody around me a little nuts, especially my husband. Then one day he turned to me and said, ‘You are not going to use us as an excuse for your unfulfilled dreams. You want to sing, sing.’ Thanks to him, I finally said, ‘Uncle! Permission granted to do what’s burning inside of you.’ If it were a movie, that’s when the violins would come in, the lights would come up and it would just be a lovely, tender moment. In reality, that’s when the real work started. I had a dream, but no skills. Zero. Zilch. I didn’t know eight tunes. So I set forth certain personal challenges that I could control, like learning a new song every week, learning to play the piano or challenging myself with bebop tunes.”
One early champion was a Durham record-store owner, Alf Stevenson. “The shop was called Sweet Emma’s, with nothing but old vinyl,” she remembers fondly. “I’d come in and say, ‘Oooh, Nancy Wilson!’ and he’d say, ‘OK, from Nancy we go back to Dinah [Washington], then to Little Jimmy Scott.’ He took me by the hand back through the lineage, turning me on to all these wonderful voices that were part of the heritage. I finally began to understand that this was about more than just a voice or a style or a genre. All that stuff my mother and father had exposed me to started making sense.”
Gradually expanding her repertoire and reputation, Freelon graduated from tiny, local clubs to larger venues throughout the Southeast. In 1990, a fortuitous encounter with Ellis Marsalis led to a meeting with music executive George Butler that led to a contract with Columbia Records. Freelon’s eponymous debut album, a syrupy, strings-heavy affair, was something, she says, “I had very little choice in. It came on the heels of Natalie Cole’s success with her tribute to her father, so Columbia was looking for something similar.” The album failed to ignite much interest among critics or record buyers, but it did earn Freelon the first of her five Grammy nominations.
Next came Heritage. Freelon requested that she be allowed to record the all-standards collection with her own band, “but they wouldn’t let me-not that I had any slouchers on that album, what with Kenny Barron and Christian McBride, but to me this type of music really shines when there’s been some history with the players. I’m very proud of Heritage, but it wasn’t really in my comfort zone.”
Listen, Freelon’s third and final Columbia release, proved to be a mixed blessing. She recalls that “the entire jazz department was in a state of disarray. It didn’t seem like anybody was at the helm.” As a result, the album was “sort of all over the map.” Still, it provided her with the chance to blend Kurt Weill, Alec Wilder and Gerry Goffin with several of her own compositions, a satisfying experience she likens to “playing in a sandbox, trying a little of this and a little of that.”
Though “deeply disappointed” by her departure from Columbia in 1994, she considers the two hardscrabble years that followed among the most valuable of her career. “During that period,” she says, “I worked my butt off and was learning, learning, learning. I learned more about the craft of singing than at any other time in my life and really got back to basics by working on my live performance.”
When Concord Records came calling in 1996, Freelon felt she’d finally “come home. It was so great to be in a situation where people respected your ideas and weren’t second-guessing you. The first album I did for them, Shaking Free, was one of the easiest to record because we just basically came in from the road and did what we’d been doing. It was great. I had no idea that recording could be so easy.” The title, perhaps also a sly reference to the constrictions she’d faced at Columbia, was, she says, chosen to convey the message that “this album was all about independence. About being honest. About shaking free of other people’s expectations.”
Freelon remembers her follow-up release, Maiden Voyage, as “a perfect example of the kind of support I was getting at Concord. I went to [label president] Glen [Barros] and [producer] John [Burk] and said, ‘Look, I really want to celebrate women songwriters.’ They didn’t have a single negative comment. All they said was, ‘Great. Go for it.'” The resulting album, which ranks among her most critically acclaimed, is not only a sterling salute to such disparate talents as Dorothy Fields, Laura Nyro, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Blossom Dearie but also testament to Freelon’s increasing assurance as a songwriter, most notably on the self-affirming “Sing Me Down.”
With the new millennium came an increasing desire by Freelon to break free of traditional, linear definitions of “what it means to be a jazz singer.” With the superb Soulcall, which marked her debut as a producer (“I kinda thought it would be easy,” she laughs, “but it wasn’t! It’s a real challenge to produce yourself and remain objective”), she successfully harnessed various influences, from gospel and soul to hip-hop and funk, bringing them into harmony with her evolving jazz sensibility. Soulcall also introduced her evocative “One Child at a Time,” a gentle plea for the nurturing of young talent that, she says, “came out of an experience I had with some kids at a songwriting workshop in Washington, D.C.” Since then, no matter where her schedule takes her, she tries to find time to make a musical connection with local children. “You have to go where the young ears are,” she explains. “They’re not at clubs or concerts or hearing it on the radio, but I want to make sure they develop an appreciation for good music. The reality is we’ve pulled music programs out of the schools and then we complain when all that kids give back to us is rhythm and words. That’s all we’ve left them! So, I come to them with a celebration of the melody. We work on melodic and lyrical ideas to help them cultivate a respect for things that are beautiful.”
Soulcall, which garnered Freelon her fourth and fifth Grammy nominations, moved her closer than ever to the major leagues. The album’s healthy sales and heightened critical attention put her on the periphery of the same playing field as Cassandra Wilson and Dee Dee Bridgewater, and earned her the creative freedom to realize her dream of shaping a full-length tribute to her musical hero, Stevie Wonder. There have, she observes, “been several instrumental apperceptions, but if your not dealing with his words you’re overlooking a lot of his genius. These songs will be here in another 40 years, which is certainly not something I can say for many pop tunes I’ve heard.”
She had, of course, dipped into the Wonder songbook before, most recently for Soulcall’s shimmering “If It’s Magic.” Facing the challenge of paring Wonder’s enormous catalog to fit a 12-track disc, Freelon’s “first decision was that I was going to cover tunes from all through his career. Choosing the first five tunes was the hardest. Once I’d made those selections it then became a question of balancing the project. Even then, though, it was still difficult, because there were so many songs I wanted to deal with. ‘Golden Lady’ was, for example, a tune that I really wanted to include, but we just couldn’t get it together.” Balance is, indeed, key to Tales of Wonder’s powerful appeal, with Freelon paying equal homage to Wonder the young hit-maker (“My Cherie Amour”), the innovator (“Superstition”), the politicized poet (“Black Orchid”) and the incurable romantic (“Send One Your Love”).
Long before the album reached store shelves, Freelon knew she was laying herself wide open for a fresh round of “this ain’t jazz” criticism. The same vacuous condemnation that continues to plague Diana Krall and Jane Monheit started to swirl around Freelon when Soulcall hit its genre-crossing stride. Like Krall and Monheit, Freelon dismisses jazz purists’ put-downs, pointing out that “when I covered ‘Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair’ I don’t recall anybody saying, ‘Hey! She’s going too 18th century!”
An outspoken advocate of “judging things solely on the basis of their artistic value,” she argues, quite sensibly, that “all that matters is if it’s good or not. That’s very personal and very subjective. I can take ‘I don’t like it.’ It shows that a person is allowing his or her own ears and own heart to tell them the truth.” A keen admirer of any artist “who’s willing to take a few risks and deal with a tune in a different way,” Freelon points out that “I’ve been accused on [Tales of Wonder] of not being as funky as Stevie. Who could be? And who would want to sound just like the original? We claim we want something different but at the end of the day when something arrives in a different form it frightens us or makes us feel uncomfortable.”
Throughout the past few months, Freelon has been inundated with e-mails from frustrated Wonder fans who, much as they admire the album, wonder why their favorite Stevie track wasn’t included. She could, she says, easily assemble a Tales of Wonder Two, but doesn’t think such a commercially driven initiative would provide her with much creative satisfaction.
Freelon is looking for satisfaction by stretching out again. “We’re coming up on what would have been Thelonious Monk’s 85th birthday,” she says, and Freelon’s been “writing lyrics to some of his tunes-‘Locomotive,’ ‘Misterioso’ and others. So I’m looking at recording some Monk music, but I’m thinking of doing it for kids. I would love to get very young ears attuned to his magic. I’d also like to do some writing. I’ve never set myself the challenge of writing an entire body of music for a project, so I’m thinking about that, too.”
Try, however, to pin her down to specifics of these forthcoming projects and she happily confesses that “none of those cakes are baked. I’ve decided to give myself permission to not have a plan in the short term.”
For now, she’s content to savor the hard-won realization that “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m doing what I love, [which] makes me a better human being. When criticisms are leveled or I hit bumps in the road, that’s what sustains me. If somebody else can’t dig it or doesn’t like it, that’s OK, ’cause I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. When they take attendance and call the name Freelon, I call out, ‘That’s me! I’m in place!’ I’m in class, on time and under budget.
“And that’s a really, really great feeling.”
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/14/523915085/nnenna-freelon-on-piano-jazz
Internationally hailed as one of the greatest vocalists to come along in decades, Nnenna Freelon
exudes both class and sophistication. Her soulful style consists of
fresh interpretations of classic standards. A six-time Grammy nominee,
she also starred in the critically acclaimed 2014 show Georgia On My Mind: Celebrating The Music Of Ray Charles in Las Vegas. On this 2002 episode of Piano Jazz, Freelon surprises host Marian McPartland with a lyric to her original tune "Threnody."
Originally broadcast in the spring of 2002.
Originally broadcast in the spring of 2002.
Set List:
- "Just In Time" (Comdon, Green, Styne)
- "If I Had You" (Campbell, Connelly, Shapiro)
- "Skylark" (Mercer, Carmichael)
- "Threnody" (McPartland)
- "Come Rain Or Come Shine" (Arlen, Mercer)
- "All In Love Is Fair" (Wonder)
- "Straighten Up And Fly Right" (Cole, Irving)
A Singer’s Tribute to Lena Horne, Her Regal and Daunting Role Model
When the jazz singer Nnenna Freelon was a little girl, she recalled in her show, “Lena: A Lovesome Thing,” on Wednesday evening at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, Lena Horne was “held up as the standard of beauty and pride.”
Ms.
Freelon doesn’t sound much like Horne except in passing phrases that
convey the attitude of regal hauteur that was a Horne trademark. Her
voice is lighter, her style much jazzier and more experimental. But you
could still hear the influence; this was no idle tribute.
Again
and again Ms. Freelon, who looks two decades younger than her 56 years,
reiterated how crucial and daunting a role model Horne was for her. The
theme of the show is really her quest for self-esteem with the image of
Horne as inspirational lodestar.
Ms. Freelon, who recently released the album “Homefree” (Concord), is a singer of many parts
that don’t always mesh. But when they do, your admiration for her
sophisticated technique turns into something deeper as she conveys the
private associations of a song. That technique is a patchwork of
influences, of which Ella Fitzgerald’s scat is one of the most
prominent. Another of her voices is a less emphatic, tonally thinner
echo of Sarah Vaughan.
As
for the kind of high drama Horne could conjure to devastating effect,
Ms. Freelon uses her hands, which are continually weaving patterns, to
do much of the work, although her version of “Stormy Weather” had ample
thunder and lightning.
As
is usually the case with jazz singing, the fewer frills the better. And
when Ms. Freelon and her excellent trio (Brandon McCune on piano, Wayne
Batchelor on bass and Adonis Rose on drums) performed a number in which
the artifice evaporated, you felt a powerful one-to-one connection.
She
and the group recast “I Feel Pretty” as a minor-key jazz swinger
revolving around the phrase “that I hardly can believe I’m real.” As her
character studies her reflection in a mirror you think of Ms. Freelon,
in the early throes of self-invention, fiercely determined to be a
glamorous, in-charge woman like Horne.
Even
more arresting was a very slow, intense “Moon River,” which transformed
this folksy expression of wistful nostalgia into the vow of an artist
gazing at the moon’s reflection in the water to someday be “crossing you
in style.” Out of such dreams, singing careers take shape.
“Lena: A Lovesome Thing”
continues through Saturday at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540 Park
Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095.
A version of this review appears in print on May 13, 2011, on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Singer’s Tribute to Lena Horne, Her Regal and Daunting Role Model.
Nnenna Freelon to kick off N.C. Jazz Festival
The 37th annual festival runs Feb. 2-4 at the Hilton Wilmington Riverside.
Six-time Grammy-nominated singer Nnenna Freelon will headline the opening night of the 37th annual festival, which runs Feb. 2-4 at the Hilton Wilmington Riverside. After Freelon plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights will be filled by a rotating roster of top jazz musicians playing multiple sets, each led by a different bandleader.
“It’s the A-team,” the Durham-based Freelon said of her band Monday during a phone interview. Her backing trio is Miki Hayama from Kyoto, Japan, on piano, Adonis Rose from New Orleans on drums and NYC’s Wayne Batchelor, who’s been playing with Freelon for nearly 20 years, on bass.
“We’ll be dealing with the standards,” Freelon said. “I sort of take a non-traditional approach to the standards, so it will be standards that you know the titles of but that we approach a little bit differently.”
Think the songs of Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald but delivered with the smart sultriness that’s Freelon’s trademark. Freelon has done album tributes to the work of artists as diverse as Billie Holiday and Stevie Wonder, both of which got Grammy nods, and she’s got the knack of taking familiar material and making it her own.
“I sort of feel like the songs pick me, lyrically or melodically or both, and give me an opportunity to say something I can’t say in my normal life,” she said.
Freelon has also written her own songs, like the bluesy “Cell Phone
Blues,” in which she sings, “Put the cell phone down/ My love is on the
line.”
Thursday will mark Freelon’s first performance in Wilmington since she did a residency at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2015 for her multimedia show “The Clothesline Muse,” which blends music, drama and visual art. During her time in the Port City, Freelon and her daughter, the visual artist Maya Freelon Asante, worked extensively with students at Williston Middle School.
Even as she’s increasingly involved in arts education, Freelon calls live performance “my true love.” She suggests it has therapeutic benefits for both her and her audience.
“We definitely need the arts more than ever now,” Freelon said. “I hope I can offer a bit of respite to everyone who’s feeling this collective anxiety. Music has a way of easing some of those tensions.”
Contact John Staton at
910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.
Thursday will mark Freelon’s first performance in Wilmington since she did a residency at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2015 for her multimedia show “The Clothesline Muse,” which blends music, drama and visual art. During her time in the Port City, Freelon and her daughter, the visual artist Maya Freelon Asante, worked extensively with students at Williston Middle School.
Even as she’s increasingly involved in arts education, Freelon calls live performance “my true love.” She suggests it has therapeutic benefits for both her and her audience.
“We definitely need the arts more than ever now,” Freelon said. “I hope I can offer a bit of respite to everyone who’s feeling this collective anxiety. Music has a way of easing some of those tensions.”
Contact John Staton at
910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.
“Music does give you that other dimension, that other way of communicating.”
Freelon has also written her own songs, like the bluesy “Cell Phone
Blues,” in which she sings, “Put the cell phone down/ My love is on the
line.”
Thursday will mark Freelon’s first performance in Wilmington since she did a residency at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2015 for her multimedia show “The Clothesline Muse,” which blends music, drama and visual art. During her time in the Port City, Freelon and her daughter, the visual artist Maya Freelon Asante, worked extensively with students at Williston Middle School.
Even as she’s increasingly involved in arts education, Freelon calls live performance “my true love.” She suggests it has therapeutic benefits for both her and her audience.
“We definitely need the arts more than ever now,” Freelon said. “I hope I can offer a bit of respite to everyone who’s feeling this collective anxiety. Music has a way of easing some of those tensions.”
Contact John Staton at
910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.
Nnenna Freelon never met Lena Horne, but the jazz vocalist knows exactly what she would have said to the late, great music legend if she had.
“I would say first of all thank you for having the guts to stick it out,” Freelon said in a phone interview to promote her concert Friday in Lincoln. “She was blacklisted for a while because of her political views. She was a person who really stood by her own notion of what was right. She spoke out against racism. She fought for Civil Rights. She knew she was taking a risk by taking a very public stance.
Freelon waited until her children were nearly grown before embarking on her career. Her youngest was 10 was she began touring full time, she said. She was in her late 30s when she recorded her first CD for Columbia Records in 1992.
Thursday will mark Freelon’s first performance in Wilmington since she did a residency at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2015 for her multimedia show “The Clothesline Muse,” which blends music, drama and visual art. During her time in the Port City, Freelon and her daughter, the visual artist Maya Freelon Asante, worked extensively with students at Williston Middle School.
Even as she’s increasingly involved in arts education, Freelon calls live performance “my true love.” She suggests it has therapeutic benefits for both her and her audience.
“We definitely need the arts more than ever now,” Freelon said. “I hope I can offer a bit of respite to everyone who’s feeling this collective anxiety. Music has a way of easing some of those tensions.”
Contact John Staton at
910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.
Jazz vocalist Freelon pays tribute to Lena Horne
Nnenna Freelon never met Lena Horne, but the jazz vocalist knows exactly what she would have said to the late, great music legend if she had.
“I would say first of all thank you for having the guts to stick it out,” Freelon said in a phone interview to promote her concert Friday in Lincoln. “She was blacklisted for a while because of her political views. She was a person who really stood by her own notion of what was right. She spoke out against racism. She fought for Civil Rights. She knew she was taking a risk by taking a very public stance.
“She
could have done it quietly. She could have done it under the radar. But
she chose to use her celebrity to shine the spotlight on things that
were important to her. And because she made that sacrifice, she made an
opportunity for someone like me, for someone she never met.”
Freelon,
a six-time Grammy Award nominee, will make her Lincoln debut with a
tribute show to Horne, “Lena, A Lovesome Thing,” to open the seventh
season of Arts for the Soul, the concert series at First Presbyterian
Church.
Freelon, 59, will put her own personal stamp on Horne's signature tunes, such as “Stormy Weather” and “Misty.”
“I’ve
been a fan of her music since I was a very little girl,” said Freelon,
who grew up in Cambridge, Mass. “When I was young there were not that
many women of color gracing the cover of magazines. But Lena was one. So
my mother pointed me in the direction of this woman. She would say
'That’s a classy lady. That’s a beautiful woman. You can do that.' So
even from afar Lena was having an impact on my life.”
And
what a life it’s been, from singing at the White House to performing
with the likes of Ray Charles, Ellis Marsalis, Al Jarreau and George
Benson to teaching, including a four-year stint as a National
Spokesperson for Partners in Education.
All
the while, she has cherished her roles of wife and mother. She and her
husband, Phil, a North Carolina architect, celebrated their 34th
anniversary Sunday. Their two sons are university professors and their
daughter is a visual artist.
“I
really feel blessed to have a full life, a life on stage to a life off
the stage,” she said. “My children have had a chance to witness their
mother chasing her dream, which when you try to preach to your kids they
should try to do that, they don’t really listen to you as much as they
watch you. So watching me build my career, I feel they had an
opportunity to witness the truth of what I was trying to model.”
Freelon waited until her children were nearly grown before embarking on her career. Her youngest was 10 was she began touring full time, she said. She was in her late 30s when she recorded her first CD for Columbia Records in 1992.
She
credits Marsalis -- father to jazz greats Branford and Wynton -- with
kickstarting her career and landing that first CD deal. They met in 1990
at the Southern Arts Federation’s jazz conference. He approached her
after she performed a set with a bass player.
“He
asked if I would like him to accompany me on a jam session, and I
nearly fell off my chair,” she said. “We established a friendship and
wonderful relationship I treasure. He’s been a mentor, a father figure
and just a wonderful adviser through the years. I’ve stayed in touch
with him.”
“It’s been a lovely, lovely ride,” she said.
In
addition to her touring and education outreach, Freelon is working on
“The Clothesline Muse,” a multidiscipline theater project that explores
the clothesline as a metaphor of our community lifeline and it’s ties to
our environment.
The
performance includes dance, live music, spoken word, interview text,
video and interactive art. The cast includes 6 dancers, a percussionist
and Freelon as “The Muse.” The singer is collaborating on the project
with her daughter, Maya Freelon Asante, and choreographer Kariamu Welsh,
who is Asante’s mother-in-law. It will have its world premiere in March
in Philadelphia.
“There are so
many stories attached to the (clothes)line,” she said. “People who
washed other people’s clothes. People who washed their own clothes.
There are these really wonderful, interesting cultural stories. And
every culture has a story attached to the line.”
Nnenna Freelon: The Journey of a Muse
Nnenna Freelon
You’re never too mature or experienced to learn something new and Nnenna Freelon says she is no exception to the rule. With a professional musical career that spans 20 years and whose work voyaged the world, the songstress continues to stretch her melodic muscles and open her mind to new experiences. Nnenna gravitates to what’s innovative and intriguing, all the while pays respect to history and refuses to neglect her roots.
Nnenna’s son Pierce teaches the origin of both Jazz and Hip Hop in his Bebop to Hip Hop course at UNC Chapel Hill, where he also introduced the Beat Making Lab (www.beatmakinglab.com). The project offers the opportunity for music conception in other countries and teaches the science of beat making. The professor, musician and journalist teaches and shares with music lovers, like his mother, the significance in the two genres in the history of music, which Nnenna says she has learned to value greatly.
“I have a great respect for it [Hip Hop] and he [Pierce] introduced me to it,” Nnenna says. “I originally saw it as music and not as a culture that had an artistic, political and dress component to it. He helped me open my mind to the people who make the music and allowed me to broaden my views. I think it’s fabulous when you can hear music and it can do that.”
The six-time Grammy Award-nominee continues to spread her artistic wings as she ventures a new multimedia family project and production with her daughter, visual artist Maya Freelon Asante and her daughter’s mother-in-law, choreographer Dr. Kariamu Welsh. Nnenna says The Clothesline Muse is a two-act production that includes an intergenerational dialogue that incorporates dance, music and humor in the discussion of a woman’s worth, celebrating it and the meaning of community. With the purpose to create a conversation between peers and groups of various ages, The Clothesline Muse also serves as a bridge in communities between artists and educators.
“It celebrates grandmothers and mothers, but also sisters, daughters and granddaughters,” the composer adds. “It also talks about what it means to be a woman in the 21st century.”
Nnenna Freelon
With the recent release of her holiday CD Christmas, Nnenna gives Jazz lovers a taste of what they’ve missed since her last musical project. She says her recent independent project is both sacred and secular. With nonstandard versions of the season’s holiday music people are accustomed to, Nnenna also pays tribute to the greats, including with Duke Ellington’s “I Like the Sunrise” that speaks to the anticipation of the beloved Christmas day. Her bluesy voice with jazz flair in her tunes gives music lovers her usual, nontraditional approach to melody.
“I’ve grown and stretched over the years, but it’s all good if you stay on the train,” the singer admits. “You have to be good and grown to sing this music well.”
Since Nnenna began her professional career in the music industry with her self-titled debut with Columbia, she acknowledges the culture of Jazz has changed.
“Jazz is always evolving,” the Cambridge, Mass. native adds. “It’s not frozen in time and it continues to grow, develop and change. Music is like water and flows like a river – you can’t dam it up. Jazz was freedom music and freedom of expression. It has all of these different components. I don’t agree that it’s outdated, and I’m happy to see young people shape it to their own and into their own talents.”
As the craft of musicianship evolves over the course of time, Nnenna professes the need for the arts as a constant, which influenced her decision to gravitate to music as a career and her passion.
“You can’t be wholly educated without knowledge of musical arts and theater because these are the aspects of being a learned human being,” she says. “If you think about it, all of the discoveries that have been made were made by thinking outside of the box. They [the arts] stimulate inquiry and the spirit. Life is not multiple choice. Life calls on you to improvise and to think illogically because the arts help stimulate things. Without the arts, you cut the heart out of what it means to be human.”
Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna credits her parents, who she said were born in the segregated southern part of the country, for her appreciation and appetite for the arts, in all forms.
“They grew up where it was illegal to go to the library and to the theater, but believed the arts were important,” she comments. “My parents had me involved in church, and my mother wanted me to go to the theater and to museums so I could experience what she didn’t and couldn’t.”
Noted Jazz musician, composer, broadcaster and educator Dr. Billy Taylor was another major influence in the musical veteran’s career.
“A lot of things don’t end up happening at a young age because things end up getting squished,” Nnenna professes. “He [Dr. Billy Taylor] made a strong impression on me because he pushed me to take music seriously and I don’t know where I’d be without him. He was a great mentor and a great friend.”
Some artists admit they face pressure from the industry to make music for the masses that will sell. The Concord Records label artist says that’s a burden she doesn’t have to carry. It’s innate for her to continue to deliver a consistent pattern of a nonstandard approach to standard music, she adds.
“I’m an artist who makes a living making my art and I’m okay,” Nnenna proclaims. “I have a car that’s paid for. I have a house and I have clothes. Success is defined by the individual. I don’t chase money, I let money chase me. That’s how I roll. I don’t change my artistic style to chase approval or popularity.”
The artist makes no apologies for who she is and works hard in every avenue of her career. She shows no signs of slowing down as she rides the waves of what’s new and lives out the artistic dreams her parents always wanted for – one creation at a time.
“My favorite song is the next song I’m going to write because it’s about the journey – not a Grammy, not being nominated, but living the life I love,” she says.
Visit Nnenna’s website at www.nnenna.com to purchase her CD Christmas and for more information on The Clothesline Muse, go to www.clotheslinemuse.com.
by Iya Bakare
In the Jazz Tradition: Nnenna Freelon
Monday, December 3, 2018 | 7 pm
BUY TICKETS
Monday, December 3, 2018 | 9 pm
BUY TICKETS
Durham Fruit & Produce Company
The ‘In the Jazz Tradition’ Package, which
provides access to all 14 ‘In the Jazz Tradition’ sets at Durham Fruit
& Produce, including performances by Nnenna Freelon, Cécile McLorin
Salvant, Nellie McKay, Catherine Russell, Jazzmeia Horn, René Marie, and
Kate McGarry, is now on sale. Packages are available for
purchase online, via phone at 919-684-4444, and in person at the Duke
University Box Office, Monday through Friday, 11 AM to 6 PM.
###
Nnenna Freelon does not simply
interpret the standards of the great American songbook. She reinvents
them entirely, stretching their melodies and pushing and pulling at
their meters until they are reborn. Whether singing the songs of Billie
Holiday on her GRAMMY-nominated Blueprint of a Lady or paying tribute to Lena Horne in her show Lena: A Lovesome Thing,
her warm voice glides from stately sophistication to kinetic joy,
delighting in the possibility of the tune at hand. Concurrently raised
on a stack of jazz records and in the grand gospel tradition of her
childhood Massachusetts church, Freelon took time to listen, learn, and
develop her own approach before recording her debut in her late
thirties. In the quarter century since, she has been nominated for six
GRAMMYS, entertained at the White House, become an accomplished actor,
and earned a reputation, according to NPR, as “one of the greatest
vocalists to come along in decades.” Freelon is a creative and
philanthropic force in Durham, where she has lived since 1978, and she
provides a fitting invocation for In the Jazz Tradition, with hometown artistry as rich as that of any jazz singer in the world.
“A jazz singer of unstinting vivacity.”
THE
MUSIC OF NNENNA FREELON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH NNENNA FREELON:
Nnenna Freelon - Round Midnight
Nnenna Freelon - Superstition
Nnenna Freelon - Lately
Nnenna Freelon - Better Than Anything
If I Had You - Nnenna Freelon
"My Mother's Gift - Nnenna Freelon - TEDxRaleigh 2011
Nnenna Freelon - Overjoyed - Best Audiophile Voices
Nnenna Freelon Creepin'
Nnenna Freelon - Skylark
Nnenna Freelon All In Love Is Fair
Nnenna Freelon - Nature Boy
I Feel Pretty- Nnenna Freelon & Ziad Jazz Quartet live
Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna Freelon at the 20th Standard Bank Joy Of Jazz
Nnenna Freelon: Homefree--What is home?
Nnenna Freelon Interview April 12 2016
Nnenna Freelon with the Charleston Jazz Orchestra
Nnenna Freelon / Bird Of Beauty
Nnenna Freelon - I Cried For You
Nnenna Freelon / Another Star
Nnenna Freelon - Button Up Your Overcoat
Nnenna Freelon - All of Me
Mike Garson & Nnenna Freelon - The Very Thought Of You
Nnenna Freelon - Moon River
The Island - Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna Freelon - Straighten Up and Fly Right
Nnenna Freelon - The Meaning Of The Blues
Overjoyed - Nnenna Freelon
Nnenna Freelon - Don't Explain
All Tracks - Nnenna Freelon
JAS Listen Up! Nnenna Freelon - Full Interview
Nnenna Freelon
One critic described her as "a spell-binding professional, who
rivets attention with her glorious, cultivated voice and canny
stagecraft".[3] She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Ellington Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Apollo Theater, Montreux Jazz Festival, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and more.
She suggests that her influences included several "not famous people", as well as such familiar names as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, artists whose records her parents played at home. "It's important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says, grateful that her parents did just that. Nnenna followed her grandmother's sage advice regarding those singing aspirations. "I did something that my grandmother told me: 'bloom where you're planted', 'don't get on a bus and go to New York or L.A., sing where you are'."[5]
In Maiden Voyage (1998), she leaves behind standard and comfortable conventions and releases an inner spirit that allows her to creatively soar to a higher dimension. Watch out! When a woman reaches this point there's no telling what will come next.[11] Freelon's seventh album, Tales of Wonder (2002), covers hit songs written and/or recorded by Stevie Wonder. She considers him one of the greatest artists of our time and describes how his music easily became her music, as it touched her life throughout the years. "A lot of Stevie Wonder's music is on the level of many other unique artists like Duke Ellington, like Thelonious Monk. When you hear Stevie, you know that's who it is. I put him in a genius class, he's fabulous."[12] On her Grammy-nominated release, Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday (2005), which comes highly recommended, Freelon pays tribute to the quintessential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday in the best possible way—without imitation and putting her own interpretations on material written by or associated with Lady Day. Her band, adjusted to fit the mood of each song, skillfully complements her at every turn. With Freelon is a group of veteran jazz artists who give her album a welcome presence. Tenor saxophonist Dave Ellis, trumpeter Christian Scott, and flutist Mary Fettig add stellar musical partnerships to the program. Freelon's long-term quartet of Brandon McCune, Wayne Bachelor, Kinah Boto, and Beverly Botsford provide cohesive accompaniment that serves as an intuitive accompaniment for her vocal offerings.
Early life and education
Freelon was born Chinyere Nnenna Pierce to Charles and Frances Pierce in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was raised.[4] She has a brother Melvin and a sister named Debbie. As a young woman, she sang extensively in her community and the Union Baptist Church and at St. Paul AME. She recalled, "I started singing in the church, like so many others...."[5] Nnenna graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a degree in health care administration. For a while she worked for the Durham County Hospital Corporation, Durham, North Carolina.
She suggests that her influences included several "not famous people", as well as such familiar names as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, artists whose records her parents played at home. "It's important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says, grateful that her parents did just that. Nnenna followed her grandmother's sage advice regarding those singing aspirations. "I did something that my grandmother told me: 'bloom where you're planted', 'don't get on a bus and go to New York or L.A., sing where you are'."[5]
Personal life
In 1979, she married architect Philip Freelon.[4] She and her husband raised three children, Deen, Maya and Pierce, before she decided to perform professionally as a jazz singer.[6] Their son Pierce Freelon is a hip hop artist, a Visiting Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Central University and the founder of the website Blackademics, for which he has interviewed many notable figures such as Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Jesse Jackson.[7] Deen Freelon is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University studying social media and politics.[8] Daughter Maya Freelon Asante is a visual artist.[9]
Career
In 1990, Nnenna Freelon went to the Southern Arts Federation's jazz meeting and met Ellis Marsalis. "That was a big turning point. At that time, I had been singing for seven years. Ellis is an educator and he wanted to nurture and help. What I didn't know at the time was that George Butler of Columbia Records was looking for a female singer. Ellis asked me for a package of materials. I had my little local press kit and my little tape with original music. Two years later, I was signed to Columbia Records." She was in her late 30s when she made her debut CD, Nnenna Freelon, for Columbia in 1992. The label dropped her in 1994, and Concord Records signed her in 1996.[10]
In Maiden Voyage (1998), she leaves behind standard and comfortable conventions and releases an inner spirit that allows her to creatively soar to a higher dimension. Watch out! When a woman reaches this point there's no telling what will come next.[11] Freelon's seventh album, Tales of Wonder (2002), covers hit songs written and/or recorded by Stevie Wonder. She considers him one of the greatest artists of our time and describes how his music easily became her music, as it touched her life throughout the years. "A lot of Stevie Wonder's music is on the level of many other unique artists like Duke Ellington, like Thelonious Monk. When you hear Stevie, you know that's who it is. I put him in a genius class, he's fabulous."[12] On her Grammy-nominated release, Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday (2005), which comes highly recommended, Freelon pays tribute to the quintessential jazz vocalist Billie Holiday in the best possible way—without imitation and putting her own interpretations on material written by or associated with Lady Day. Her band, adjusted to fit the mood of each song, skillfully complements her at every turn. With Freelon is a group of veteran jazz artists who give her album a welcome presence. Tenor saxophonist Dave Ellis, trumpeter Christian Scott, and flutist Mary Fettig add stellar musical partnerships to the program. Freelon's long-term quartet of Brandon McCune, Wayne Bachelor, Kinah Boto, and Beverly Botsford provide cohesive accompaniment that serves as an intuitive accompaniment for her vocal offerings.
Babysong workshops
Nnenna Freelon is deeply involved in arts education as the national spokesperson for the National Association of Partners in Education, an organization with over 400,000 school/community partnership programs across the United States, dedicated to the improvement of the quality of American education by supporting arts education programs.[13] Freelon has also maintained ties to her hospital-work roots as her jazz career has flourished. Her Babysong workshops, which she launched at Duke University Medical Center in 1990, teach young mothers and healthcare providers the importance of the human voice for healing and nurturing. She particularly stresses the importance of parents singing to small children to enhance brain development.[14][15]
Recognition
Nnenna Freelon was awarded the Eubie Blake Award from the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute, and the Billie Holiday Award from the Academie du Jazz. Freelon performed a film soundtrack, remaking Frank Sinatra's classic "Fly Me to the Moon" for The Visit movie, starring Billy Dee Williams. She also had a cameo as a nightclub singer in the 2000 Mel Gibson romantic comedy What Women Want, performing her trademark song "If I Had You". In addition, she has been nominated twice for the "Lady of Soul" Soul Train Award.[16] On February 21, 2001, Nnenna Freelon earned a standing ovation for her live performance at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards telecast in Los Angeles, performing Straighten Up and Fly Right.[17]
Grammy history
- Career Nominations: 6
References
- Nnenna Freelon AllMusic biography http://www.allmusic.com/artist/nnenna-freelon-mn0000870011
- DUBROVNIK SUMMER FESTIVAL, (Retrieved May 15, 2015)
- Gourse, Leslie. The Golden Age of Jazz in Paris and Other Stories About Jazz, Xlibris Corporation (2002), page 153 – ISBN 0-7388-2592-1[self-published source]
- "Interview with Nnenna's husband, architect Philip G. Freelon". Baltimore Sun. June 5, 2005. Retrieved August 18, 2007.
- "Billy Taylor's Jazz at The Kennedy Center". Retrieved August 18, 2007.
- "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz: Nnenna Freelon". NPR.org. National Public Radio. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
- Blackademics website
- "Faculty Profile – Deen Freelon". American University. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- "I Want to Make Joy: Maya Freelon Asante". DareGreatly.com. Cadillac. February 7, 2017. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
- The Profound, Introspective and Supremely Talented, Nnenna Freelon, (Retrieved August 18, 2007)
- All About Jazz (Retrieved August 19, 2007)
- Nnenna Freelon: Walking in Wonderland Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine., (Retrieved June 7, 2002
- National Association of Partners in Education Archived 2007-08-18 at the Wayback Machine.
- Baby Song Video
- Boston Globe – June 9, 2006, Freelon not afraid to voice individuality, (Retrieved August 18, 2007)
- IMDb: Resume Nnenna Freelon Bio
- Take 6 & Nnenna Freelon – Straighten Up and Fly Right on YouTube
- Billboard Chart History for Nnenna Freelon
