Singer Nnenna Freelon goes 'Beneath the Skin' in Atlanta return

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Jazz at All Saints brings world-renowned artists to Midtown Atlanta in an affordable and accessible way.

Credit: All Saints' Episcopal Church

A 122-year-old church in Midtown Atlanta is serving the local arts community by offering affordable jazz concerts and artist conversations in its sanctuary. 

The 2025 Jazz at All Saints series at All Saints' Episcopal Church features world-renowned musicians with connections to the city and tonight welcomes seven-time Grammy nominated North Carolina singer Nnenna Freelon. 

Freelon's debut 1992 recording included a breathtaking version of Savannah lyricist Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael's song “Skylark.”

And over the decades, her career and dozen albums have led her through interpretations of the 20th century's finest songwriters, from Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. 

But her latest, Beneath the Skin, is the first to feature her own stories in song, inspired by finding new strength and purpose after a 40-year-marriage, raising three children and experiencing the grief of losing her husband and sister, who died within six months of each other in 2019 and 2020.

"You know, as a jazz singer, we all live and breathe the standards, and there are those of us for whom that's the entire repertoire," Freelon told GPB. "Sometimes we try to find the obscure, or we try find the not-so-delved-into composers, and that's fine. I love the standards. I've always loved the standards! It was time now for me to tell my own story, lyrically, melodically, and in every way."

At 71, Freelon says she has discovered the freedom of songwriting.

"When I get in the studio, I find that, because I have written the song, I can just sing the song [without ornamentation]," she said. "I just opened my mouth and sang the song as I had imagined it when it came up and through me. And that was a revelation for me."

To document her grief journey, Freelon hosts a podcast called Great Grief. She also performed songs from her Beneath the Skin album on a North Carolina PBS special and released a memoir of the same name. She said she was inspired by Thelonious Monk's "’Round Midnight" to face the darkness of loss. 

"In that 'Round Midnight' moment, something was stirring, something was changing," she said. "Was it comfortable? No. Would I suggest it as a way to creative agency? No, I would not. I didn't exactly make friends with my grief, but I got to know her real, real well. Over time, she invited me to meet her sister, whose name is joy."

Although Freelon was born in Massachusetts and moved to North Carolina as an adult in the 1970s, she has always felt connected to the South. And the memory of her husband, celebrated architect Phil Freelon, who designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., will forever be tied to Atlanta through another building he created: the National Center for Civil and Human Rights museum.

She said it's fitting her performance is happening in the city at the same time the museum is reopening after an expansion.

"Phil's practice evolved as a cultural-building memory practice," she said. "That particular project was very, very near and dear to his heart. And so, this is another dream come true for the museum and the ideas and the ideals that it holds."

Jazz at All Saints Director Virginia Schenck, also an accomplished vocalist, said Nnenna Freelon's music is timely during a year of chaos and loss. 

"[Beneath the Skin] spends all summer on the Top 20 in the jazz charts. Thank you, Nnenna!," she said. "And here comes the book in October. Thank you, Nnenna! And it's a gift, not just for that notoriety, but the content, the authenticity, you know, we're all dealing with loss of all sorts right now. Death and loss, we don't talk about mindfully enough. And to talk about it through music and song — what a beautiful way to approach it."

Freelon said the composition on the album that taught her most about herself is the empowering and aptly titled, “Changed.”

"The tune I wrote back in the '90s, but I had no idea about what the lyric meant," she said. "Sometimes things come through you and you think you know it, and maybe you're skating on the surface and you kinda get it. But having been through what I have gone through with the loss of my husband and my sister and just all the changes. I was like, 'Oh. That's what that is.' And my losses have actually changed my relationship with a lot of tunes, ones I wrote and ones I didn't write but that I thought I knew." 

Freelon said her own words helped her cope. 

"'I am changed in my passage. I am changed. There's a sign in the water I'm changed,'" she recited. "'There's a moon high above me and it lights my discovery, that in my passage in the darkness, I'm changed.' So that is kind of like a theme song for a sister."

Nnenna Freelon performs in duet style with her music director and Grammy-nominated pianist and collaborator Miki Hayama on Friday, Nov. 14 at Jazz at All Saints at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta.  The series continues with Darren English on Feb 13 and the Brandee Younger Trio on March 13.