Beneath the Skin of Sorrow: Improvisations on Loss

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Synopsis
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.
Copyright:
2025

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781478029113
Publisher:
Duke University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
NNENNA FREELON.
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Social Studies, Music
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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