Christian Li - Visitors (2019)

Tone Rogue Records is proud to release Visitors, the debut co-led album from piano/guitar duo Christian Li and Mike Bono TODAY! After almost a decade of working together – a period which included a collaboration on Bono’s 2013 From Where You Are – the pair are now excited to release this joint album as a souvenir of the past and a blueprint for the future. Li and Bono bring this nine-track collection of originals to life with the help of Alex Hargreaves on violin, Chris Marion on strings, Dayna Stephens on saxophone, Jared Henderson on bass and Jimmy Macbride and Lee Fish on drums.

Recording an album of improvised music, in which communication and connection are vital to success, can be difficult in the artificial environment of a recording studio. Pran Bandi, who engineered the record, worked to make the musicians on this album feel as comfortable and natural as possible. The professionalism and profound musicality of the people involved, coupled with a rapport cultivated from years of working together, overrode these obstacles. The resulting product is a recording session that truly replicates the scintillating energy of a live performance.

The album opens with “Puddles” – a tune written by Bono, during a time in which he was exploring fast right hand finger style patterns. “I was trying to create fluid, cascading sounds with some unconventional harmonies and previously undiscovered finger-picking patterns. When I finally arrived at it, the melody I was hearing in my head made very clear where the harmony needed to go, thus paving the way for the rest of the song.” The album moves on to “Little Rascals” – a true testament to the close musical rapport that has developed between this acclaimed pair. As Mike explains, “the free improvisation works because of how well we know each other as people, and how vivid and clear the imagery is when playing the song.” Although Li and Bono have contrasting styles of writing, both have always felt at home on each other’s compositions. Li explains how Bono’s “Tango”, with its thorny harmonies and serpentine melody, feels somehow familiar to him even though it represents his musical world – “There is a tremendous comfort in knowing, when playing Mike’s compositions, that I am free to explore my own ideas and values as a musician without fear of causing (undue) harm.” Li’s “Space Invaders”, another stand-out track from the album, was an ill-advised compositional experiment that the composer didn’t expect to work. With the help of Bono and this talented ensemble, through their skilled improvisation, the imagery of the piece was brought into clearer focus than Li could have ever imagined.

Visitors displays the fortified musical bond between Li and Bono, and simultaneously presents a teaser to what’s to come from this esteemed duo.