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"Music: Breath of the statues. Perhaps: Silence of images. Your language where languages end" - Rainer Maria Rilke

Norman Brown

GRAMMY® Award winner Norman Brown is on close intimate terms with his audience. For almost two decades, it has been an engaging, mutually rewarding relationship, with the multitalented guitarist, composer and singer offering tasty sonic tidbits of classic R&B and contemporary jazz and his fans melting into satisfied aural bliss with every succulent, jazz inflected note. It‟s a veritable “love fest” – and Brown keeps the good vibes going on his long- awaited new release, Sending My Love, arriving this June on Peak Records. “I‟m a loving guy -- I hear that a lot. I started reading my emails and the fans were sending me so much love that I wanted to send them love back,” explains the artist, who wrote nine of the ten tunes on this offering. “The CD is about pure love, love in all its many aspects: a personal relationship and a general love for the planet and for people. We should be kind to each other,” he adds.
Brown intensifies the flavors in an already much-beloved recipe of sound, with ten tracks that flow easily from steamy R&B to guitar lashed flights of instrumental fantasy, all the while keeping things right in the pocket. From the first track – the easy breezy, horn-laden smooth jazz single “Come Go With Me” – to the sexy groove of the R&B single “I‟m Pouring My Heart Out” to the gentle acoustic guitar melody of “One Last Goodbye,” Brown shows off the stylistic diversity that has gained him a loyal following. He does so by utilizing some of the tried and true musicians, songwriters, and producers he‟s worked with in the past: longtime collaborator Herman Jackson, bassist Alex Al, drummer Teddy Campbell, rhythm guitarist Jubu, and percussionist Kevin Ricard. He also reached out to R&B production camp Tha Bizness and R&B songwriters Melvin Moore III (who happens to be his godson) and Floyd E. Bentley III from his Kansas City hometown for the hop vocal tunes “I‟m Pouring My Heart Out” and “One Last Goodbye.”

Even his daughter Rochella Brown, a student at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and her songwriting partners arranged a new version of the Kenny Loggins classic “Celebrate Me Home” (which was co-written by Bob James). Rochella sings with Brown on the beloved gem, which also features a choral contributing from GRAMMY® winning ensemble Sounds Of Blackness. Brown adds that, with a daughter serving in Iraq, he dedicated the song to our troops. “I‟m dedicating that to my second oldest daughter, Kesha, a West Point graduate who is a first lieutenant, fighting in Iraq,” he said. “I think about all the families of these troops and the troops themselves, and „Celebrate Me Home‟ hits it on the head -- we all want to see them come home safely.”

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