NEW BOOK

Beneath The skin of Sorrow

Over a period of just six months, eminent jazz vocalist and composer Nnenna Freelon’s life changed irrevocably. Her soulmate and husband of nearly forty years, the renowned architect Phil Freelon, passed away from ALS, her sister Debbie succumbed to cancer, and the family dog, Basie, died as well. In the immediate wake of these compounding losses, Freelon could not find a way to process or understand her grief and lost the ability to read, sing, and improvise. The inner melody that had vibrated inside of her since childhood went silent. She then realized that the only way to move forward was to lean into her grief.

Early Praise

“This deeply learned, uniquely beautiful book is full of brilliant insights into the deep philosophical and spiritual dimensions of grief and its relationship to creativity by one of our foremost artists. Nnenna Freelon’s serious intellectual and artistic reflections search for the possibilities to be found in grief. Not in avoiding it, but in going there, living with and through, listening closely to it, and seeing anew through it.”

– Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays