LIVING ARCHIVE
Drea d’Nur’s Living Archive holds works, offerings, and site-based encounters where sound, memory, and place meet in real time. Each entry becomes a chapter in an ongoing practice of remembrance.
REIMAGINE BLACK DEATH: A Requiem For Our Suffering.
A living practice of grief, remembrance, and ancestral witnessing through sound, gathering, and site-based ritual.
Reimagine Black Death is ongoing, iterative, and ritual-based work that evolves in time as each offering becomes a new encounter with grief, memory and collective witness.
A Requiem For Roberta Flack
A Women’s History Month tribute honoring Grammy Award–winning singer Roberta Flack. Drea d’Nur offered this requiem in partnership with No Wound Untreated.
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 2026.
Grief Sanctuary for D’Angelo
The Grief Sanctuary was a living altar of remembrance designed to hold D’Angelo’s unique sound honoring his church upbringing, masterful musicianship, and spirituality.
GCR Audio, 2025.
A Requiem for Our Suffering at Buffalo AKG
This requiem was curated to mark the close of Before and After Again, a landmark exhibition that responds to the tragic slaying of ten members of Buffalo’s Black community on May 14, 2022. Over 400 people came together in remembrance as D’Nur sang and played her own piano from home in an intimate and spiritual gathering of shared communal grief.
Buffalo AKG, 2024.
A Requiem for Our Suffering at Shea’s 710 Theatre
Featuring a Chicago-based vocal ensemble, dancers, musicians and spoken word artists, D’Nur sang parts of her original working requiem along with sacred prayer songs during one of the most devastating years for the community of Buffalo. Several mental health professionals were present to offer support for the grieving.
Shea’s 710 Theatre, 2022.
HEALING SONGS IN BEAUTIFUL SPACES
A spiritually guided sound healing session led by Drea d’Nur’s voice and piano.
Silo City
The Silo City offering was the first Healing Songs In Beautiful Spaces, documented and previously released in full as a gift on soundcloud.
Silo City, 2017.
Universalist Unitarian Church
Original and spiritual songs, storytelling, and breath work in beautiful and sacred places.
Universalist Unitarian Church, 2018.
NYU
Presented by ICNYU as part of their Healing through the Arts program.
New York University, 2019.
THE SPIRIT OF NINA
An evolving body of work across performance, image, and film.
Spirit of Nina is a multi-form body of work moving across stage, film, image, and exhibition. It explores memory, voice, and presence through distinct but interconnected expressions. Each form carries a different aspect of the same inquiry. Visit the Spirit of Nina archived page HERE.
Stage Production I: The Spirit of Nina
Kleinhans Music Hall, 2017.
Stage Production II: The Spirit of Nina
Directed by Lorna C. Hill.
Kleinhans Music Hall, 2017.
Short Film: The Spirit of Nina in Buffalo - Watch HERE
Featured at the Tryon International Film Festival in the hometown of Nina Simone, The Spirit of Nina in Buffalo is Drea d’Nur’s first film. 2017.
Photo Series: I Am Nina
#IAMNINA, a photo series that captures the Spirt of Nina within us.2017.
Art Exhibition
Burchfield Penney Art Center, 2017.
Emergence
From Spirit of Nina emerged the idea of an abbreviated offering in honor of Nina Simone featuring vocals and strings. Dear Nina is a collaborative performance work that evolved into its own series of presentations beginning in 2018.
COLLABORATIONS
DEAR NINA: In Collaboration with Rootstock Republic (now operating as Wondersmith Entertainment)
“Power, poise and passion reign supreme in this pairing of voice and strings that celebrates the legendary—and at times uncharted—canon of Nina Simone. Drea d'Nur (Vocalist, Pianist) and House of Rootstock (Strings, Arrangements) share center stage in this uniquely intimate and newly orchestrated songbook of Nina's Love Songs, Blues and Protest Music.”
THIS LOVE THING: In Collaboration with MacArthur Fellow Rami Nashashibi (Co-Executive Production)
This Love Thing, a music and visual project that explores social justice themes through the turbulent & triumphant expressions of love.
Chicago, Tennessee, Buffalo, 2020-2024.
Photo Credit: Mustafa Hussain.
OFFERINGS AND ACTS OF REMEMBRANCE
Black Jerusalem (On the Mount of Olives with Pastor Otis Moss III)
Mt. of Olives, Jerusalem, 2023
Harriet Tubman’s Graveside Offering (Curated for The FreeTHEM Walk)
Drea d’Nur believes that this was probably her first Requiem. Spirit-led and featured movement and song by Michelle Gibson and drumming by Sengalese Griot, Alassane Sarr.
Auburn, NY, 2021.
Photo Courtesy of The FreeTHEM Walk Organizers.
Break Me Down (Original Song, Video Concept Written by Drea d’Nur)
D’Nur retells some of our nations most tragic events by highlighting the Spirit of Resilience of Black people through powerful imagery, soul-piercing vocals, and dancing. This video honors Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland.
2015.
Cry For Change (Composed by Drea d’Nur in Honor of Trayvon Martin)
Cologne, Germany, 2012.