Nnenna Freelon | |
|---|---|
 Freelon in 1998 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Chinyere Nnenna Pierce |
| Born | July 28, 1954 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Years active | 1992–present |
| Labels | Concord, Columbia |
| Website | nnenna |
Nnenna Freelon (born July 28, 1954) is an American jazz singer, composer, producer, and arranger.
Freelon was born Chinyere Nnenna Pierce to Charles and Frances Pierce in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was raised. [1] 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...." [2] 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 Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, whose records her parents played at home. "It's important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says. "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'." [2]
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. [3]
She has worked with Ray Charles, Ellis Marsalis, Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Dianne Reeves, Diana Krall, Ramsey Lewis, George Benson, Clark Terry, Herbie Hancock, and Terence Blanchard. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Ellington Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Apollo Theater, Montreux Jazz Festival, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Freelon is the national spokesperson for the National Association of Partners in Education, an organization with over 400,000 school and community partnership programs across the United States, dedicated to arts education. [4] Freelon has maintained ties to her hospital-work as her jazz career has flourished. Her Babysong workshops, which she started at Duke University Medical Center in 1990, teach young mothers and healthcare providers the importance of the human voice for healing and nurturing. She emphasizes the importance of parents singing to children to enhance brain development. [5]
In 1979, she married architect Philip Freelon. [1] 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 a Presidential Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania studying social media and politics. [8] Daughter Maya Freelon Asante is a visual artist. [9]
| Year | Title | Genre | Label | Billboard [10] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | Nnenna Freelon | Jazz | Columbia | 11 |
| 1993 | Heritage | 10 | ||
| 1994 | Listen | 20 | ||
| 1996 | Shaking Free | Concord | ||
| 1998 | Maiden Voyage | 10 | ||
| 2000 | Soulcall | 13 | ||
| 2002 | Tales of Wonder | 7 | ||
| 2003 | Church – Songs of Soul and Inspiration Various Artists – Ooh Child – Nnenna Freelon | Gospel | Utv Records | 157 |
| Live at The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C. | Jazz | Concord | ||
| 2005 | Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday | 13 | ||
| 2008 | Better Than Anything | |||
| 2010 | Homefree | |||
| 2012 | Christmas | Brown Boulevard | ||
| 2021 | Time Traveler | Origin Records | ||
| 2023 | AnceStarswith Pierce Freelon | Children's music | Blackspace Records |
| Nnenna Freelon Grammy Awards History | |||||
| Year | Category | Title | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | Shaking Free | Nominated | ||
| 1999 | Maiden Voyage | Nominated | |||
| 2001 | Jazz Vocal Album | Soulcall | Nominated | ||
| Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocal | Button Up Your Overcoat | Nominated | |||
| 2006 | Best Jazz Vocal Album | Blueprint of a Lady – Sketches of Billie Holiday | Nominated | ||
| 2022 | Time Traveler | Nominated | |||
| 2024 | Best Children's Album | AnceStars | Pending | ||
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.
Massachusetts is a U.S. state in New England. The music of Massachusetts has developed actively since it was first colonized by Britain. The city of Boston is an especially large part of the state's present music scene, which includes several genres of rock, as well as classical, folk, and hip hop music.
Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is one of the most successful female jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.
Piano Jazz is a weekly one-hour radio show produced and distributed by National Public Radio (NPR). It began on June 4, 1978, and was hosted by jazz pianist Marian McPartland (1918–2013) until 2011. It is the longest-running cultural program on NPR. The show generally features a single guest, and usually consists of about an equal mixture of discussion and playing, often duets with McPartland. Initially the guests were limited to jazz pianists, but the format was later expanded to include performers on other instruments as well as other genres. The show provides an inside look at the relationships of jazz musicians, since McPartland often had long friendships with many of her guests. Piano Jazz won a Peabody Award in 1983. The show is an exclusive production of South Carolina public radio on WLTR and is offered nationally by NPR.
Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. was an American jazz pianist and educator. Active since the late 1940s, Marsalis came to greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s as the patriarch of the musical Marsalis family, when sons Branford and Wynton became popular jazz musicians.
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Bill Anschell is a jazz pianist and composer. He has recorded seven CDs as a leader, and performed or recorded with many jazz greats. His original compositions and piano work are prominently featured on Freelon's Grammy Award-nominated recording Shaking Free and her CBS recordings Heritage and Listen. His own CDs have received extensive national airplay and critical acclaim. His compositions have appeared in many films and television series, including "The West Wing," "The Wire," "Bloodline," and "NCIS: LA."
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Gretchen Parlato is an American jazz singer. She has performed and recorded with musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Kenny Barron, Esperanza Spalding, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Miller and Lionel Loueke.
Philip Goodwin Freelon was an American architect. He was best known for leading the design team of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Robert Hurst is an American jazz bassist.
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Terry Waldo is an American pianist, composer, and historian of early jazz, blues, and stride music, and is best known for his contribution to ragtime and his role in reviving interest in this form, starting in the 1970s. Says Wynton Marsalis in his introduction to Waldo's book: "He teaches Ragtime, he talks about Ragtime, he plays it, he embodies it, he lives it, and he keeps Ragtime alive." The book, This is Ragtime, published in 1976, grew out of the series of the same title that Waldo produced for NPR in 1974. Waldo is also a theatrical music director, producer, vocalist, and teacher. He is noted for his wit and humor in performance, as "a monologist in the dry, Middle Western tradition." Eubie Blake describes his first impression of Waldo's performance thus: "I died laughing...that's one of the hardest things to do—make people laugh. Terry's ability to do this, combined with his musicianship, actually reminds me of Fats Waller."
The Panama Jazz Festival was founded in September 2003 by pianist and Grammy winner Danilo Pérez.
The Beast is an American alternative hip hop band from Durham, North Carolina. They were formed in 2007 by emcee Pierce Freelon, drummer Stephen Coffman, bassist Peter Kimosh and pianist Eric Hirsh. All members of the band are graduates of UNC Chapel Hill. The Beast is best known for their 2010 album, Freedom Suite, which was recorded with jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon and released in collaboration with Okayplayer's jazz channel The Revivalist. Other artists the Beast has collaborated with include 9th Wonder, YahZarah, Phonte, The Apple Juice Kid, Geechi Suede and Branford Marsalis. The band has been praised for their progressive lyrics and eclectic, jazz-based production.
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Pierce Freelon is an American musician, educator, author and politician from Durham, North Carolina. He is a Grammy-nominated family music artist and former Durham City Council Member. Freelon is the founder of Blackspace, an Afrofuturist digital makerspace. He co-founded Beat Making Lab, an Emmy Award winning PBS web-series. He is co-director, writer and composer of The History of White People in America, a PBS animated series.
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Blueprint of a Lady: Sketches of Billie Holiday is a 2005 album by Nnenna Freelon recorded in tribute to Billie Holiday.
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