During the middle of April this past year, I took a trip from coast to coast that ended with the wheels of a 747 touching down on a saturated JKF runway in the middle of the strangest springtime storm to ever hit New York City. I rushed to collect my luggage and jumped into a cab—soaking wet and undoubtedly a tourist—with a single goal in mind: to reach my hotel in time to interview Mike Bono before his gig that evening. I met Mike at the Stanford Jazz Workshop two years ago. He was the Guitar Mentor Fellow as part of the prestigious Mentor Fellowship Program, and a favorite among the students for his beautifully captivating sound that complimented his always personable character. Throughout the interview, I became increasingly convinced of the factuality of an old suspicion of mine: that Mike is one of those rare professionals who is able to effortlessly conceal the brilliance of his work behind a most modest and inviting exterior.
Soon after graduating from the Berklee College of Music, Mike
released an album as a bandleader and exclusive composer entitled From Where You Are. Every track on the
record seems to speak to its listeners from a place of both warmth and envy, from
both celebration and reminiscence. It is undoubtedly some of the most beautiful
and creative music I have ever had the joy of discovering—an opinion proven to
be a constant throughout its audiences.
The album was released
in 2013 and features the Mike Bono
Group, including Naseem Alatrash, Roberto Giaquinto, Matthew Halpin,
Jared Henderson, and Christian Li, with a special guest appearance by Julian
Lage.
Mike was born in
Staten Island and grew up in New Jersey, attended Powell High school and graduated
from the Berklee College of Music in 2013.
Can you tell me tell
me about the influences that shaped the compositions on your record?
Many of the pieces I wrote developed over a period of time,
and were influenced by the different ways people would interpret them. For
instance, the first piece I wrote was “Closure,” the second to last track on
the record. Naseem, our cellist, went to Berklee with me, and one day I
overheard him practicing on our floor. I didn’t know well him at the time but
I knocked on his door and asked him to read one of my charts. He played it so
beautifully that I told him then and there that I would get a band together so
we could play more.
My favorite piece is
“First Dance”—can you tell me about what it was like writing that tune?
That’s very interesting actually, because a lot experimentation
that preceded that piece. I had a deal with Julian [Lage] in which each of
us would set a timer and, without touching a guitar, write a piece within a
half hour every day for a month. Then we mailed our pieces to each
other and played through them all. I remember feeling so liberated as a
composer after that process because it opened my ears and taught me to rely
strictly on my musical instincts. The first piece I wrote with my guitar after
that month was “First Dance.” I started playing, and the first four bars
came out. Then I recorded myself improvising the rest, narrowed my ideas down,
and condensed them into the concrete melody that is First Dance. I could talk
about all of them, but that would take hours…
Why don’t you
describe a couple more?
Alright. I approached each piece very differently. “Statue
Chess”— the second track—was written while I was listening to a lot of—well, do
you know Béla Bartók?
The classical composer?
Right. So I started to surround myself with the sounds and
textures of the classical string quartet. Instead of looking at the piece as one
entity, I first wrote a melody, and then tried to sing a bass line and hear the
counterpoint between those two components. When I first gave the piece to the
band it was just lines of notes with some letters floating above them.
Eventually a more concrete harmony developed through playing it repeatedly.
It just formed as you
went along.
Yeah, and that’s the great thing about having a band with
people you know really well. I can bring music to them and hardly have to say a
thing. That tends to happen when you play the same music with the same band for a
while; we don’t read the music when we play because we know the tunes so well.
By now I’ve divorced myself from the original mindset I had when I wrote each
tune, which gives all of us more liberty in what we can do with the form.
Sometimes we’ll play free and then ease into the melody, sometimes we’ll expand
sections and get into a completely new groove. It’s very musical, and very exhilarating.
Constantly approaching anything from the same angle leads to monotony. It gets boring
for the listeners, too! If we can’t find a way to incorporate new material into
our live shows, then why would people come? At that point, they could just buy
the record and listen to it at home.
The other tune I approached in a completely different way was
the solo piece, “Visionary / Eternal Walker.” That was actually inspired by the
TV show The Walking Dead, believe it or not. I used to love that show, and at the time I was
getting deep into chordal harmonies. The beginning of that tune is all open string
chords, so I decided to put a parameter on it, and make a melody using that limitation.
That’s how that came to be.
Did you write all the
tunes with the idea of making an album?
The idea of an album hadn’t even entered my brain until my
group had been playing together for at least two years. It didn’t seem like
something realistic! Just having a band seemed far-fetched until I actually
played one of my tunes with someone, and then realized it was doable. I remember
thinking how amazing it is that people are willing to play what I think up and
put on paper.
There’s a wide scope
of textures on your album, ranging from orchestral harmony with cello to heavy,
driving rock. Can you talk about that?
Let’s see. I wrote the ensemble pieces first, and we
received a great deal of encouragement from our audiences in response to those.
I did not originally intend on putting any solo pieces on the record, but after
considering the flow of the album I knew it would be best to break up the group
arrangements with less busy, open sounds. There are pieces with no cello, or
two guitars—there are “groups within a group” that are represented on the
album, which I feel gives it a very natural balance.
How did you find your
place at Berklee alongside thousands of other musicians?
The first person I met at Berklee whom I had not known
previously was Jared, the bass player in our group. After only playing together
for a little while, we realized that there was definitely something there, some
connection we could both recognize. He knew a lot of people coming to Berklee, so he would
organize jam sessions in the basement of this dorm we were all living in until
the wee hours of the morning. I met a lot of people through that. Of course you
discover others through word of mouth, playing in ensembles, et cetera. Building
a network of people definitely gives you a feeling of home in such a large
place like Boston.
When I first got to Berklee, my intention was to study
guitar and get better, but my main goal was actually to get my stuff together
and play on Broadway. I wasn’t writing much music before college. I was playing—but not much. No one had made it
apparent to me that it was possible to make a living playing jazz. I had it in
my head that I would get my sight reading together and work on all these
different styles of guitar so that I could work in a Broadway pit orchestra.
Now call it fate or whatever you want, but the first group I was put in at
Berklee was a composing ensemble. I took to it immediately and started to model
my tunes in the style of Pat Metheny, who I had been listening to a lot at the
time, and began to articulate my ideas the way I wanted to hear them. I just
kept doing it, little by little, asking people to read down my charts and
always getting feedback. Eventually I figured out my style of writing at the
time—of course it has changed since then, just as it is bound to change again—which
brings us to the day I asked Naseem to play my tune in the practice room.
Can you talk about
living and gigging in NYC?
I moved here from Boston in November. My steadiest job has
been teaching at The Calhoun School. I’ve also been doing gigs
with my band to promote the album; we did one at the Regattabar in Boston, and
another at Birdland in New York. We actually had Chris Cheek play with us, who
is my current favorite tenor player. Other than that, you find yourself doing
lots of shows at restaurants and private events. I did a really fun gig with
this great singer, Natalie Cressman. She’s fantastic. We did a CD release show for her at Joe’s
pub a while ago. I also did a show in May for a museum exhibit, and I’ve got
more shows coming up with a great clarinetist named Felix Pikely. All this
seems intermittent and random—which it is, to be honest—but I’m able to make a
living playing music. I feel very lucky for that.
It seems like a lot
of your connections have stemmed from your time as a mentor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
How has that affected you, now that the Mentor Fellowship is over?
I had always taught private lessons, ever since middle
school. But two summers ago at Stanford Jazz was the first time I ever headed an
ensemble. They threw the lot of us mentors into these teaching positions and I
think we all learned more than we could have fathomed at the start of it all. We
learned from the kids, from the other faculty members, from each other—and those
connections have lasted. Countless of opportunities have been presented to me as a
product of my time there. I can remember one of my friends suggesting the idea of
applying for the mentorship to me and I just went along with it. Actually, going
to Stanford was my first time in California.
Really? Well, it’s
not this [gesturing to the rainstorm outside].
No, it certainly is not! This is pretty bad.
From where do you derive
a lot of your influence, as a young player and now?
The most important person would be my mom. She really got me
started. She had a couple guitars, and I can remember her playing chords in the
first three or so frets, and me as a little five-year old would go up and strum
it. I would always fascinated by it. So she bought me this little tiny guitar
and I started taking lessons. My uncle is also a guitar player, and he taught
me, too. My mom had this Beatles anthology that I would play out of, too—we’d
always play through the songs together. When I got to middle school I started
getting really into progressive metal and played in rock bands until early high
school. That was when I got into jazz. I was actually taking voice lessons at
the time…
So you can sing, too?
I can "sing," but don't ask me to! I remember waiting around at the
school where I took voice lessons and heard this crazy,
shredding jazz guitar solo on the speakers. I went up to the guy at the counter and went, “Who is
this?” I had to know! He said it was Pat Martino. So I went home and downloaded
every Pat Martino record out there. I eventually got in contact with Vic Juris—great,
great guitar player, teaches at Rutgers—and he was the first guy who really
gave me a ton to work on. Without him, I don’t think I would have gotten into
college on guitar, really. I don’t think he understands how much he helped me,
being that I only took two lessons from him. It wasn’t really until I got to
Berklee that I became bombarded with new music. My main development jazz-wise
happened during my first two years there. Between classes, acquaintances, jams
and just being in the Berklee environment, I had all this new stuff coming at
me constantly. I was just enamored with it. As of late, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with a
player named Ben Monder. He’s in New York, and we’ve been corresponding a bit.
He actually listened to a couple tracks from the record and said he liked them,
which honestly is such a big deal for me. I’d love to stay in touch and get to
study with him at some point. I’d like to think I’m made up
primarily of all of those influences.
Now, this is a
strange question, but everyone seems to enjoy it quite a bit. What two fruits
best represent your playing style, and why?
You know, I don’t even know how to approach that question. But
I can tell you what fruits I like! I enjoy raspberries and kiwis. Raspberries,
because they’re tart and they’ve got a little grit to them. Like I said, my
first musical experiences were deeply rooted in rock music, so the sourness
that raspberries have may be symbolic of that. And kiwis because I work on
making my playing style very fluid and clear, which is pretty much the very
texture of the kiwi. They’re also very original fruits, you know? There’s
nothing quite like the kiwi.
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