Richard Bona featured on Sting's 'Prayer Cycle 2' Benefit Album

Thursday January 20, 2011

Sting, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian, Angelique Kidjo, Yes’ Jon Anderson, actor Robert Downey, Jr., and the late Jim Morrison are all part of “Prayer Cycle 2: Path to Zero,” a benefit for the anti-nuclear organization Global Zero.

The seven-song set, due out May 10, was written, produced and coordinated by composer Jonathan Elias as a sequel to his 1999 release “The Prayer Cycle.” Like that, “Path to Zero” is “a little prayer based on having kids these days,” Elias tells Billboard.com. “I think we’re a little on the dark side at times, and it doesn’t take much to really think about, how unless we really gain some consciousness, we really are heading into uncharted waters.”

The new collection’s anti-nuclear focus “relates to my sort of prayer for continuation for my kids as it relates to the world today,” says Elias, who has a 10-year-old son, Jack, and a daughter, Lilli, the latter of whom sings on “Path to Zero.”

Elias spent nearly five years working on the project, a stylistically mixed and world-flavored bag that also features Richard Bona, Salif Keita, Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and Iroquois singer Joanne Shenandoah. He’d become friendly with Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, while working on the 2006 film “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” and even got Styler to join Sting and Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan on the opening track, “Atomic Mother.” “When Trudie heard the stuff I did with her voice,” Elias recalls, “she was like, ‘Oh my goodness!,’ smiling and all excited about it.”

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