Bob Bonastre - Nature Art

The Frenchman Bob Bonastre, who uses classical guitar, voice and percussion to paint his musical tableaus, has been influenced by the music of South America, and has a particular affinity with musicians such as Egberto Gismonti, Pat Metheny and Ralph Towner. Like these artists, he is also capable of setting up a harmonic environment that basks between quiet melancholy and exciting attacks, and spanning broad melodic phrases on top of it. Brilliant flageolets keep flashing in his pieces and improvisations, followed by exuberant bass runs and perfectly articulated themes. Work with a prepared instrument is not foreign to him: In the cut “Song For My Personal African Shaman”, Bonastre makes his classical guitar sound like a mixture of thumb piano and a distorted E-guitar. This, he buttresses with driving percussion grooves.