IMN : Updates for Richard Bona

INTERVIEW: Richard Bona, Faithful to Study of Life, Faithful to Music

IMN

May 9th, 2011

from http://news.err.ee

Faithful to Study of Life, Faithful to Music
By:Edu Llado Vila

“Cameroonian Richard Bona is currently one of the most internationally celebrated jazz bassists and vocalists. Bona was one of the performers chosen for the finale of Tallinn’s Jazzkaar on April 30. This is the conversation ERR News held with him some minutes before his concert.”

Your last album is titled “The Ten Shades of Blues.” Sounds like you’re trying to find different approaches to the blues scenario…
Well, my aim was to do with how sophisticated the world of blues is and how diverse it can be. People often think blues only belongs to Africa, but that’s not true, because you can listen to it in every place in the world. You can hear blues in Irish music, in Indian music, in flamenco, in gipsy music… I think it’s one of the most diverse forms of music because blues is everywhere. I wanted to make a record about it and that’s why I went to India, Africa, Nashville, to show people how sophisticated and diverse blues is.

So I guess there has been a lot of research behind that last album.
There has been research in terms of traveling, because I don’t need the kind of research a scientist would do. My own research is to travel, meet people, listen and capture a frame or a sound.

Is traveling your way of working as a musician? Is this how you catch inspiration?
I’d say my way of working mostly arises from a will of learning. Because music for me is a study of life which never ends. I love that way and I want to keep going that way. Because I know that I don’t know, the more I know, the less I know.

To read the full interview click here

Richard Bona plays to packed house at Jazzkaar 2011

IMN

May 4th, 2011

This past Saturday, April 30, Richard Bona played Tallin, Estonia’s Jazzkaar Festival. To the great joy of all those in attendance he was joined on stage by the wonderful Mayra Andrade. His performance, and the festival, were a resounding success.

For more pictures of the performance click here

Richard Bona to Perform at The Israeli Opera

IMN

April 21st, 2011

Richard Bona will kick off his Spring tour tomorrow in Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv as part of their World Music Series. Here’s what mideastnight.com had to say about the upcoming performance:

“Jazz bassist and singer Richard Bona will perform at the Israeli Opera on April 22, 2011 as part of the World Music series. This is the musician’s second visit to Israel – the first in 2008 was with guitarist Mike Stern. Idan Raichel, music consultant for the series, will moderate the evening and will also join Bona onstage for a song.

Richard Bona was born in Cameroon in 1967, in a family of musicians. His grandfather and mother were singers and Bona began to sing in the village church with his mother and sisters at age 5. Not having instruments at hand, he learned to make his own, including a guitar. Performing in a French jazz club in Doula at age 13, his discovery of Jaco Pastorius in the owner’s record collection led him to the bass guitar.”

To read the full article click here

Live Video: Richard Bona and Raul Midon

IMN

March 11th, 2011

Richard Bona and Raul Midon recently did a run of intimate duo performances in anticipation of their full band dates in both the US and Europe this summer. Here’s a little preview of what can be expected from these great musicians.

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

IMN

January 20th, 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.”

To read the full article click here

LIVE REVIEWS Richard Bona in Australia

IMN

November 30th, 2010

IMN’s own Richard Bona played Australia for the first time this past week. His trip included stops in Sydney, Melbourne and the Adelaide International Guitar Festival.

You can find a review of his show on November 24 at The Basement in Sydney here

And, one for his performance at the Melbourne Recital Centre on November 25 here

Be sure to check back for a wrap up on the Adelaide International Guitar Festival soon!

Richard Bona Journeys to Australia

IMN

November 22nd, 2010

from chuggentertainment.com

The electrifying Cameroonian bassist and singer Richard Bona is coming to Australia with his band for the very first time. This is destined to be a wonderful, genre-bending tour that takes in Sydney and Melbourne before finishing up at the famous Adelaide International Guitar Festival, which is curated by Slava Grigoryan.

Richard’s band for his first Australian outing includes a handful of fine contemporary musicians – Etienne Declin Stadwijk on keyboards, Lee Tatum Greenblatt on trumpet, Jean Christophe Marie Maillard on guitar, and Ernesto Siverio Simpson on drums.

“On July 07, Richard was honoured by the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal with the Antonio Carlos Jobim award. Bona is the seventh recipient of the Award, created for the Festivals 25th anniversary to honour artists distinguished in the field of world music whose influence on the evolution of jazz and crossover is widely recognized. Armed with his bass, Richard Bona won swift entry to the most prestigious of music circles: Salif Keita, Harry Belafote, Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Bobby McFerrin and Wynton Marsalis…

As winner of the Antonio Carlos Jobim Award Bona follows in the footsteps of Toots & the Maytals, Gilberto Gill, Angelique Kidjo, Salif Keita, Khaled and Ibrahim Ferrer.”

Richard Bona’s new album Ten Shades of Blues will be released in Australia to coincide with the tour, and it’s an album that embodies Richard’s multi-cultural approach as he says: “I like each of my albums to have a theme… this time I chose the blues. You can find it in Africa, in America and in India. People put a style to it, a style with guitar and vocals. But I see it first as a scale, one that’s present in different traditions and expressions in music.”

To read the full article click here

LIVE REVIEW Richard Bona in Australia

IMN

November 21st, 2010

Singer and bassist Richard Bona has it all at his fingertips: jazz, blues, funk, fusion, bossa nova, Caribbean rhythms and the African beats of his native Cameroon. On this, his first, visit to Australia, Bona wooed and won his Melbourne audience with a perfectly paced performance, segueing between musical styles and guiding his band from angelic melodies to killer grooves and much uncharted territory in between.

The music pours out of this man. Bona’s five-stringed bass is so much part of him that even when he takes it off to sing acapella, his hands shape chords and finger invisible strings. And singing is second nature to him, rooted in the traditions of his family. He favours the higher registers, in a delicate African falsetto that thrills and resonates. One of the highlights of the show was his solo vocal number where he sang harmonies, looping them with one of his many foot pedals.

No electric bassist since Jaco Pastorius (one of Bona’s many influences) has sounded so smooth and melodic. And Bona is not just an instrumentalist: he is leading the band and singing at the same time. Mostly the songs act as counterpoint to the bass lines, but on some of his most energetic bass passages he will scat along, having fun with his instrument and with his audience. Bona is a cheeky showman and a born storyteller, ready to spin a yarn, tell a joke or play a trick on us.

To read the full article click here

INTERVIEW Richard Bona

IMN

November 3rd, 2010

from www.themusicnetwork.com

Richard Bona
By Tom Baepler

Do you remember the first time you heard about your latest favourite artist? Perhaps they caught your attention on the radio, or in an article in a newspaper or maybe a referral from a friend. You may even get that same rush of adrenalin when you first hear Cameroon born multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer Richard Bona, who travels to Australia in November for the Adelaide Guitar Festival (as well as gigs in Melbourne and Sydney).

He is known in musician circles as one of the world’s finest bass players, but he’s so much more as his new album The Ten Shades of Blues attests. Jazz great Pat Metheny thinks much of Bona too and has included him in his band for several years. Tom Baeppler, a long-time Bona convert, speaks to Richard prior to his Australian tour.

You say your new album The Ten Shades of Blues, has a blues theme, but from what I hear, you have a lot of different sounds, such as Indian and country… What do you think about the blues in those forms of music?

What is the blues? From a musician’s standpoint the blues is a scale, a pentatonic scale and is played all around the world. You hear that scale in Africa, of course you hear that scale In the Delta Mississippi, and you hear that in Indian music. You hear that in Irish music, and even the music that we usually call bluegrass. So I wanted to show in this record that the blues is actually one of the most diverse (kinds of) music, and one of the most sophisticated.

To read the rest of the interview click here

Richard Bona to Play Australia

IMN

September 13th, 2010

from undercover.com.au

Cameroonian bass player Richard Bono is heading to Australia for the first time.

Bona, who recently won the Antonio Carlos Jobim award at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, will tour with a band featuring Etienne Declin Stadwijk on keyboards, Lee Tatum Greenblatt on trumpet, Jean Christophe Marie Maillard on guitar, and Ernesto Siverio Simpson on drums.

To read to the full article click here

Richard Bona Nominated for French Jazz Music Award

IMN

June 7th, 2010

The nominees for the French Jazz Music Awards (Victoire du Jazz) were announced today. Among the nominees was Richard Bona who has been nominated in the “Best Vocal Artist of the Year” category.

The ceremony will take place at Juan Les Pins on July 13th. It will be broadcast on TV (National Channel France3) on July 20th at 10:30pm.

Visit the site the awards site for more details: http://www.lesvictoires.com/jazz/

2010 Antonio Carlos Jobim Award: Richard Bona

IMN

May 21st, 2010

Richard Bona is the 7th recipient of the Antonio Carlos Jobim Award, created for the Festival’s 25th anniversary to honour artists distinguished in the field of world music whose influence on the evolution of jazz and cultural crossover is widely recognized. Armed with his bass, Cameroon’s Richard Bona won swift entry to the most prestigious of musical circles: Salif Keita, Harry Belafonte, Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Bobby McFerrin, Branford Marsalis… In 2007, one year after the release of his 4th solo album, Tiki, he would deliver a most memorable series of shows at the Festival in the Invitation series-and will be welcomed back this year as MAnu Katché’s special guest. Routinely recognized as the most expert of musicians, Bona is an equally impressive composer, ingeniously blending the rhythms of his native land with those of jazz, imbuing the whole with a lyrical, reflective quality that is sensitive, touching and very personal. Richard Bona, The Ten Shades of Blues – July 2, 6 p.m., Théâtre Maisonneuve, PdA *(En voix Rio Tinto Alcan series), June 30, 6 p.m., Gesù – Centre de créativité (Invitation series). As winner of the Antonio Carlos Jobim Award, Richard Bona follows in the footsteps of Toots & The Maytals (2009), Gilberto Gill (2008), Angélique Kidjo (2007), Salif Keita (2006), Khaled (2005) and Ibrahim Ferrer (2004).

Richard Bona pone en pie al público de Festival de Granada con música y humor

IMN

November 11th, 2009

Granada, 9 nov (EFE).- El concierto que anoche ofrecieron en el XXX Festival Internacional de Jazz de Granada Richard Bona y su banda, el primero en agotar la taquilla, levantó al publico del teatro Isabel la Católica no sólo por el ritmo de su música, sino por el humor que intercalaron en ella.

Los aficionados al jazz de Granada le han visto crecer como artista gracias a sus cuatro participaciones en los dos festivales de la provincia y aplaudieron su evolución, a lo que el camerunés respondió con el regalo de una canción a la que llamó como la ciudad.

Bromeó sobre la ciudad, su gente con la que jugó haciendo que cantase, bailase o diera palmas, recomendó que no nos vacunásemos contra la Gripe-A y recordó que “no hay nada, pero nada peor que ver la televisión”.

Richard Bona levanta al público del Festival de Jazz de Granada

IMN

November 9th, 2009

Granada Digital – Con todo el aforo del teatro Isabel la Católica vendido (el de este músico camerunés fue el primer concierto en agotar la taquilla) Richard Bona dio un espectacular concierto dentro de la programación del trigésimo Festival de Jazz de Granada.

Bona ha actuado 4 veces en los 2 festivales granadinos, así que se puede asegurar que aquí se le ha visto crecer como artista, recién abandonada la tutela de sus maestros hasta serlo él mismo. De alguna manera el tono buen humorado de su concierto pudiera explicarse casi ya por la confianza con el público granadino, al que regaló sobre la marcha una canción a la que llamó ‘Granada’. Pero él es así, y si musicalmente resulta siempre generosamente sorprendente, regala felicidad y distensión en la misma proporción.

Richard Bona and Hindi Zahra

IMN

November 5th, 2009

From guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/05/richard-bona-hindi-zahra-review
By Robin Denselow

African artists have always been particularly open to outside influences, but this concert was remarkable both for the extraordinary array of styles and the skill with which they were blended together.

Richard Bona is a distinguished jazz player who has worked with the likes of Pat Metheny and Joe Zawinul, but here the Cameroonian bassist was out to show that jazz and blues are just part of his range. He and his band constantly changed direction, from African songs to funk, flamenco, Brazilian and Caribbean influences, mixed in with quirky demonstrations of his musicianship that veered towards good-humoured cabaret. This musical kaleidoscope was held together by light bass runs that provided the foundation for guitar, keyboard and horn solos from his impressive band. Bona’s gently exquisite vocal work was equally notable.

He looked like a pop star, sporting dreadlocks and jeans, but opened with a drifting song dominated by his high, delicate voice, before showing off the band’s dynamic range with a switch to jazz funk. From then on, the changes kept coming, from the mellow African tune M’Bemba Mama to the excursion into brassy Indian styles on Shiva Mantra, and a dazzling display of musicianship and technology in which he sampled his own solo vocals, adding layers of overdubs.

It was an excellent night, too, for Hindi Zahra, a theatrical Paris-based Moroccan singer with an almost equally eclectic approach. She started out with slinky, soulful songs in English, switching to French for north African and flamenco-influenced pieces. Then she suggested that she was capable of far more, with a brief, frantic improvisation that made her sound like a north African Patti Smith. With her debut album to be released next year, Zahra promises to be a major new discovery.

Confirmed Tourdates As Of

IMN

May 26th, 2012: Music Meeting Festival Nijmegen, Holland [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
June 1st, 2012: Park Stage L'viv, Ukraine [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
June 26th, 2012: Open Air Town Hall Marseille, France [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
June 28th, 2012: Fort Kleber Wolfisheim, France [Richard Bona with Sylvain Luc and Andre Ceccarelli]
June 28th, 2012: Fort Kleber Wolfisheim, France [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
July 31st, 2012: Hangar 6 Sea Port of Eilat Eilat, Israel [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
August 1st, 2012: Hangar 6 Sea Port of Eilat Eilat, Israel [Richard Bona Mandekan Cubano]
August 8th, 2012: Chapiteau Marciac, France [Richard Bona solo]