Nnenna Freelon returns home to perform at Cambridge Jazz Festival

It’s a homecoming of sorts for jazz singer Nnenna Freelon. The world-renowned composer, arranger, producer and actress, who was born and raised in Cambridge, performs at the second annual Cambridge Jazz Festival this Sunday, July 26 at University Park on Sidney Street, near MIT.

The free music festival returns with a sizzling lineup that includes the Ron Savage Trio accompanying Freelon on stage, Latin percussionist Eguie Castrillo and the Latin Jazz Connection, jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen, the Laszlo Gardony Saxtet and The Tóth Brothers.

A graduate of Simmons College, Freelon has toured with some of music’s greats, including Ray Charles, Al Jarreau, Aretha Franklin, Diana Krall, Herbie Hancock, George Benson and Earl Klugh. A television appearance on the program In Performance at the White House: Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz caught the eye of one of the producers of the AMC television hit Mad Men, which led to the appearance of one of her songs on that show. In 2012 Freelon had her first collaboration with legendary pianist Ramsey Lewis.

The six-time Grammy nominee spoke to the Banner recently about her theatrical project The Clothesline Muse, set to perform at the 14th biennial National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on August 7 and 8. In the conversation, she talked about her passion for arts education and upcoming performance at the Cambridge Jazz Festival.

What was the inspiration for creating The Clothesline Muse?

Nnenna Freelon: I think I can begin with my mother. She passed on in 2011. She lived all her adult life in Cambridge, and so her life story is my inspiration for The Clothesline Muse. We are in an era now called the information age and it seems we are more divided intergenerationally than ever. People are creating their own worlds through the social media and all the technology that we have available. We’re not talking to each other as much. We’re not sharing stories. The older generation — their stories, their trials, their tribulations, their glory, their grace — is not available in a way that it used to be when we relied on sharing. Clothesline Muse is at its heart a collection of stories. We’re using the clothesline itself as the inspiration. We’re “pinning up” stories on-line. The whole evening is an evening of stories and each article of clothing in the basket that my character Grandma Blu pulls out holds a story. My granddaughter Mary thinks everything she looks at is junk and not important, so she’s ready to cast away everything she sees. The evening is about packing and unpacking.

You’re a writer, a composer, and obviously a singer. You’re doing The Clothesline Muse. Are you looking forward to just singing when you come to the Cambridge Jazz Festival?

NF: [Laughs] Yes ma’am! Just one job, not 50. It’s a thrill to come home and support the second annual Jazz Festival. Ron Savage, one of the co-founders, is a long-time friend, and was in one of my very first touring bands when I was just a very, very inexperienced young singer way, way back in the day. It is such a thrill to be coming full circle and seeing him teaching at Berklee and running this Jazz Festival. It’s like, Who would have thought that many years ago that we would meet again in this kind of way? I’m thrilled.

You’ve been deeply involved in arts education. Why has it been so important to you?

NF: My personal feeling is that an educated person is a person who’s educated in culture and in the arts. I don’t think you can divide education into neat little packages that say chemistry, biology, social sciences and leave the arts out. The arts are one of the places where we learn to create community, where we learn collaboration, not competition, where we learn blending and not sort of rising to the top without your partner. In choir that can be looked at as a thrill, as something you can do without. But the life skills that you learn in choir are life skills that you can apply to a variety of areas in your life, like concentration, collaboration, blending, sharing. Even the chutzpah to stand up and solo. That takes a lot of guts. Those life skills are applicable to whatever you do, whether you go on to become a singer as your primary career or not. So I think when we cut these things out of our educational diet, we starve the part of us that’s human, the part of us that can be compassionate. If we don’t teach creativity in school, I don’t know how the kids in school are going to get it.