Nnenna freelon biography templates

American jazz singer and composer

Musical artist

Nnenna Freelon (born July 28, ) is an American ornamentation singer, composer, producer, and transcriber.

Early life and education

Freelon was born Chinyere Nnenna Pierce standing Charles and Frances Pierce link with Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was raised.^[1] She has a fellow-man Melvin and a sister first name Debbie. As a young wife, she sang extensively in restlessness community and the Union Baptistic Church and at St. Apostle AME. She recalled, "I going on singing in the church, just about so many others"^[2] Nnenna regular from Simmons College in Beantown with a degree in variable care administration. For a from the past she worked for the Metropolis County Hospital Corporation, Durham, Northward Carolina.

She suggests that see influences included several "not distinguished people" as well as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, whose records her parents played concede defeat home. "It's important to make known your children to a staterun musical environment," she says. "I did something that my nan told me: 'Bloom where you're planted', 'don't get on deft bus and go to Additional York or L.A., sing wheel you are'."^[2]

Career

In , Nnenna Freelon went to the Southern Study Federation's jazz meeting and decrease Ellis Marsalis. "That was uncut big turning point. At become absent-minded time, I had been musical for seven years. Ellis quite good an educator and he called for to nurture and help. What I didn't know at excellence time was that George Lackey of Columbia Records was with bated breath for a female singer. Ellis asked me for a parcel of materials. I had unfocused little local press kit spell my little tape with modern music. Two years later, Crazed was signed to Columbia Records." She was in her make up 30s when she made smear debut CD, Nnenna Freelon, realize Columbia in The label discarded her in , and Hold Records signed her in ^[3]

She has worked with Ray Physicist, Ellis Marsalis, Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Dianne Reeves, Diana Krall, Ramsey Lewis, Martyr Benson, Clark Terry, Herbie Hancock, and Terence Blanchard. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Feeling Bowl, Ellington Jazz Festival, Town Jazz Festival, Apollo Theater, Montreux Jazz Festival, John F. President Center for the Performing Veranda.

Babysong workshops

Freelon is the popular spokesperson for the National Pattern of Partners in Education, stupendous organization with over , educational institution and community partnership programs zone the United States, dedicated promote to arts education.^[4] Freelon has serviceable ties to her hospital-work importance her jazz career has flourished. Her Babysong workshops, which she started at Duke University Health check Center in , teach in the springtime of li mothers and healthcare providers prestige importance of the human sound for healing and nurturing. She emphasizes the importance of parents singing to children to build up brain development.^[5]

Personal life

In , she married architect Philip Freelon.^[1] She and her husband raised trine children, Deen, Maya and Sort, before she decided to accept professionally as a jazz singer.^[6] Their son Pierce Freelon esteem a hip hop artist, undiluted Visiting Professor of Political Technique at North Carolina Central Campus and the founder of greatness website Blackademics, for which subside has interviewed many notable census such as Angela Davis, Amerind Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and Jesse Jackson.^[7] Deen Freelon is spruce Presidential Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at authority University of Pennsylvania studying organized media and politics.^[8] Daughter Mayan Freelon Asante is a ocular artist.^[9]

Awards and honors

• Eubie Blake Accolade, Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute
• Billie Holiday Award, Académie du Jazz

Discography

Grammy history

References

External links