One critic described her as "a spell-binding professional, who rivets attention with her glorious, cultivated voice and canny stagecraft". She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Ellington Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Apollo Theater, Montreux Jazz Festival, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and more.\n', '

Freelon was born Chinyere Nnenna Pierce to Charles and Frances Pierce in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was raised. She has a brother Melvin and a sister named Debbie. As a young woman, she sang extensively in her community and the Union Baptist Church and at St. Paul AME. She recalled, "I started singing in the church, like so many others...." Nnenna graduated from Simmons College in Boston with a degree in health care administration. For a while she worked for the Durham County Hospital Corporation, Durham, North Carolina.\n', '

She suggests that her influences included several "not famous people", as well as such familiar names as Nina Simone and Billy Eckstine, artists whose records her parents played at home. "It\'s important to expose your children to a wide musical environment," she says, grateful that her parents did just that. Nnenna followed her grandmother\'s sage advice regarding those singing aspirations. "I did something that my grandmother told me: \'bloom where you\'re planted\', \'don\'t get on a bus and go to New York or L.A., sing where you are\'."\n', '

Return to Nnenna Freelon Autograph Profile