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With support from the Governor's Advisory Commission on African American Affairs.

"...startlingly original. Her music is spare, yet striking. Her voice is ripe, supple, strong, and impossible to ignore." -- Billboard Magazine, Melinda Newman

Singer, songwriter, bassist, and published author, Laura Love has thousands of fans throughout North America and Europe. Billboard Magazine continually includes her CDs on their annual top ten lists and the first time she performed on the East Coast was at Carnegie Hall. Combining African-American funk, blues, bluegrass, jazz, folk, gospel, reggae and country, she has an astonishing voice and an uncanny ability to get her audience to listen beyond their own musical boundaries.

Laura's recent CD, NeGrass, features guest appearances by some of the finest bluegrass musicians in North America. In this collection of traditional and original field hollers, Negro spirituals and folk songs, Laura imagines her great-grandparents being freed from slavery and embarking into an unfamiliar world. It's a lovely, heartbreaking and joyful piece of work.

Orville Johnson is an amazing guitarist and singer, known for his dobro and slide guitar stylings and vocal acrobatics. He has appeared on Garrison Kiellor's A Prairie Home Companion, toured with Mark Graham, and taught at music camps all over the world. He has played on over 100 albums, and his musical expertise can also be heard on the Microsoft CD-ROMs, Musical Instruments of the World, and the Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball. (!)

To Learn More...

• Read article from SFMS's newsletter
• Visit Laura Love’s website
• Visit Orville Johnson’s website

Hear Music Samples at...

• Laura Love’s Myspace page
• Orville Johnson’s Myspace page
• CDBaby: Listen to Laura Love's CD NeGrass
• CDBaby: Listen to several of Orville Johnson's CDs