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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.
Part love story, part homage to jazz, and part guide to creative practice within bereavement, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow follows Freelon’s difficult and personal journey to healing. Calling on the improvisational skills that she had built over her forty-year career as a jazz singer, Freelon crafted her new reality by improvising—thinking about grieving as a series of small, daily engagements with the world around her. Slowly, Freelon regained the pieces of her musical sensibility, realizing that flowing between words spoken and words sung allowed her to understand what could not be fully realized in either realm.
By improvising a new life, Freelon forged a new companionship between grief, art, and daily life. In the essays, poems, lyrics, and explorations of jazz standards that comprise this lyrical and elegiac memoir, Freelon shows how thinking about grief as an exercise in improvisation can lead to a creative coexistence with grief in all its forms.
Part love story, part homage to jazz, and part guide to creative practice within bereavement, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow follows Freelon’s difficult and personal journey to healing. Calling on the improvisational skills that she had built over her forty-year career as a jazz singer, Freelon crafted her new reality by improvising—thinking about grieving as a series of small, daily engagements with the world around her. Slowly, Freelon regained the pieces of her musical sensibility, realizing that flowing between words spoken and words sung allowed her to understand what could not be fully realized in either realm.
By improvising a new life, Freelon forged a new companionship between grief, art, and daily life. In the essays, poems, lyrics, and explorations of jazz standards that comprise this lyrical and elegiac memoir, Freelon shows how thinking about grief as an exercise in improvisation can lead to a creative coexistence with grief in all its forms.
Price: $27.95
Pages: 248
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
21 October 2025
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781478029113
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
“Nnenna Freelon’s resonant and skilled voice sings through this genre-bending, profoundly performative text. As she explores with passion and sorrow the multifaceted spaces of grief—a subject that becomes more and more a part of our national discourse—she has crafted a compelling, elegant, and extraordinary book.”—Karla FC Holloway, author of, Gone Missing in Harlem: A Novel
“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
“Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is a sensuous, subliminal, and sacred siren that embraces an intimate void reminding us all that those silenced in death become defiant choruses in the forest. Nnenna Freelon has woven a rich forest for the wailing of losses texturized by remembrances of joy. This text is a tender requiem for all the portals closed and all the portals reopened inside of her journey with grief. She acknowledges that her history is now on fire but her illuminating heart invites us to this new interior that looms with raging, unapologetic truth.”—Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
"This volume is a gift of prose, poetry and compositions for all who’ve had to improvise life and healing in the face of unimaginable grief."—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
"Freelon is clearly deeply engaging with her emotions throughout the book, but she’s also constantly on the lookout for messages from nature and her departed loved ones. What might that turtle have to say to her? How might her handy-as-hell husband talk her through fixing the dishwasher? As a book, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is full of white space, and if there is a how-to, it is a call to leave space for the unexpected, despite the allure of a full, frantic schedule."—Shelbi Polk, Indy Week
“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
“Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is a sensuous, subliminal, and sacred siren that embraces an intimate void reminding us all that those silenced in death become defiant choruses in the forest. Nnenna Freelon has woven a rich forest for the wailing of losses texturized by remembrances of joy. This text is a tender requiem for all the portals closed and all the portals reopened inside of her journey with grief. She acknowledges that her history is now on fire but her illuminating heart invites us to this new interior that looms with raging, unapologetic truth.”—Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
"This volume is a gift of prose, poetry and compositions for all who’ve had to improvise life and healing in the face of unimaginable grief."—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
"Freelon is clearly deeply engaging with her emotions throughout the book, but she’s also constantly on the lookout for messages from nature and her departed loved ones. What might that turtle have to say to her? How might her handy-as-hell husband talk her through fixing the dishwasher? As a book, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow is full of white space, and if there is a how-to, it is a call to leave space for the unexpected, despite the allure of a full, frantic schedule."—Shelbi Polk, Indy Week
Nnenna Freelon is a celebrated jazz vocalist, composer, producer, and host of the award-winning podcast Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon. A seven-time Grammy Award nominee, Freelon is a member of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. She has released over twelve solo albums, most recently, Beneath the Skin on Origin Records. Freelon lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Prelude
Rubato
First Movement. ’Round Midnight
Second Movement. Stolen Moments
Third Movement. A Love Supreme
Fourth Movement. Time Traveler
Cadenza
Acknowledgments
Biography
Rubato
First Movement. ’Round Midnight
Second Movement. Stolen Moments
Third Movement. A Love Supreme
Fourth Movement. Time Traveler
Cadenza
Acknowledgments
Biography