Richard Bona — 14 November 2023 (Barcelona)
Organised by: Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival
Venue: Fundació Conservatori del Liceu
Photography: Jordi Amela (@amela_photo_concert)
Writer: Carles Pinós
A jazz festival like the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival always has some surprise in store for us. This time we were lucky enough to attend an exclusive concert, the happy collaboration between the Liceu Big Band and the extraordinary musician Richard Bona (Minta, Cameroon, 1967). This meeting took shape on 14 November 2023 at Sala Paral·lel 62, to a resounding success with the audience, a near-full house and, most importantly, an extraordinary musical result. The line-up was as follows: Richard Bona on electric bass and vocals, and the Liceu Big Band made up of: Sergi Vergés, conductor, David Padilla and Pau Montoya, alto saxes, Roque García and Xavi Maldonado, tenor saxes, Pablo Rébora, baritone sax, Martí Pareras, flutes, Clàudia Bosch, clarinet, John Guerrero, Lluís Figuerola, Miguel Sanjosé, Elsa Armengou and Estefane Santos, trumpets, Bartomeu Mora, Pep Seguí, Marina Planellas, Guillermo Sánchez, trombones, Ramon Berjaga, tuba, Camil Arcarazo, guitar, Roger Herrero, piano, Alfredo Giménez, bass, Rodrigo Hernández, drums, Tramel Levalle, percussion.
The concert opened with the Liceu Big Band performing a Richard Bona composition, a beautiful piece in triple metre that at times recalled Frank Zappa’s timeless “Blessed Relief” (from “The Grand Wazoo”, 1972). A performance that served as the Liceu Big Band’s calling card, showing off a solid, brilliant reading with very imaginatively developed arrangements.
As the first piece ended, Richard Bona took the stage and, to an enthusiastic crowd, introduced himself; together with the Liceu Big Band he opened their collaboration proper with a piece carrying touches of African funk, upbeat and colourful, which then drifted towards latin jazz, with the horn section contributing some striking arrangements.
The third piece to sound was “Three Views of a Secret” by legendary bassist and composer Jaco Pastorius. At this point in the concert we realised this collaboration was serving, once again, to pay tribute to one of the most important musicians of the last 50 years, and one who has also been a direct influence on our headliner’s music. This format let them recreate the era when Jaco Pastorius played bass and led big bands, taking his compositions into unexplored territory; we could also make out the great Jaco Pastorius’s long shadow in the bass phrasing Richard Bona sketched throughout the piece.
The concert kept up that same level of excellence, fluidly and naturally blending our headliner’s own compositions with another piece from Jaco Pastorius (“Liberty City”), embedded with vocal loops, perfectly fusing the amalgam of styles and influences that add up to Richard Bona’s own sound. The Cameroonian bassist and singer performed pieces with bluesy touches, others with echoes of Brazilian music, songs closer to funk in a style indebted to the great Stevie Wonder, and even took on a bolero, which he made entirely his own without missing a beat.
From the outset, Richard Bona showed great rapport both with the crowd and with the rest of the musicians. His charisma and sense of humour got the audience involved, getting them to sing along to phrases (Bobby McFerrin-style) throughout his songs. The chemistry with the big band was such that you’d never have guessed they’d barely had time to rehearse together — our bassist and singer had landed just 72 hours before the concert.
The evening ended on a happy note with a laid-back rock’n’roll encore that brought a close to a night that felt like a party, and one that left the crowd wanting more — hoping that, as was joked during the concert’s introduction, Barcelona will once again become BarceBona.