Freelon makes classics sound ‘nnew’ again

Casual music fans may not know much about Nnenna Freelon, other than she has a lot of “n’s” in her name.

Yet Freelon, the guest artist for the Spokane Jazz Orchestra’s season-opening concert tonight, is one of the brightest stars in the jazz world.

In fact, her name is routinely evoked in the same sentence as the great Billie Holiday. That’s partly because Freelon has won the Billie Holiday Award from the French Academie du Jazz, and partly because her most recent CD is titled “Blueprint of a Lady – Sketches of Billie Holiday.”

Spokane audiences can expect to hear some of that material tonight.

“Billie Holiday really sang what she had to say in her own way,” Freelon says in her press bio. “That’s one of the things that was so impressive about her; she was a survivor and had an absolutely brilliant, innovative concept of her own.

“She really sang to her own time … and so do I.”

Freelon has recently been performing with the Count Basie Band and has become an acknowledged expert in the late bandleader’s music. She’ll also be performing some of Basie’s numbers tonight, backed by the 17-piece Spokane Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of Dan Keberle.

No matter which artist she is paying tribute to, she has a reputation of making the music her own.

“Nnenna Freelon possesses that rarest of qualities: When she sings a dusty old standard that legions of jazz and cabaret artists have marched over, she makes it sound freshly minted and refreshingly new,” wrote critic Robert L. Daniels of a show at New York’s Blue Note.

“Her phrasing is original, sometimes surprising and often sweetly eccentric. Freelon certainly doesn’t take a melody or a lyric for granted; instead, she mines the text for new and hidden treasures.”

Freelon’s journey has not been the typical jazz story. Her occupation before recording her first album in 1992 was health-care administrator in Durham, N.C. She was also the mother of three children.

She turned heads with an appearance at an Atlanta jam session with Ellis Marsalis and ended up with a recording contract. She sang in the style of Sarah Vaughan, but soon proved that she could cover all variety of jazz, soul and gospel styles.

Freelon remains an activist in health care and childhood issues and is deeply involved in a number of educational outreach programs, including Partners in Education.