Christopher Bono — Composer

Christopher Bono

Composer, Producer, Label Founder

Christopher Bono (OSC Director/Founder) is a polymath composer, instrumentalist and producer who has created acclaimed works and projects across genres — including orchestral, chamber and choral modern classical pieces, post-rock, jazz, experimental and electronic albums. Bono began OSC in 2010 as a vehicle for his own compositions and for collaborations with unique performers and friends. Christopher Bono started down the path of music much later than most of his contemporaries. He spent his childhood and teenage years devoted to baseball; in 1999 he was drafted by the Seattle Mariners but an injury kept him from playing. Filling the void left by the end of his athletic endeavors, Bono began playing the guitar when he was 21, and for several years he toured, recorded, and performed in an alternative roots-rock style. In his mid-20s, he made the choice to learn classical composition techniques in order to more fully realize his music. For seven years, in nearly hermetic isolation, he taught himself to read music, and studied composition independently with Juilliard professor Kendall Briggs and at La Scola Cantorum in Paris. On Bono's introspective three-movement work Invocations, Frank Oteri wrote in NewMusicBox: "While much of 21st-century contemporary composition is not beholden to any rules… Bono's music sounds as though everything he writes is something he is discovering for the very first time, even if there are clear reference points throughout to the sound worlds of other composers from both our own time and other eras." Two of his choral works were recorded by the New York Virtuoso Singers with Harold Rosenbaum conducting; film artists Tobias Stretch (Radiohead, Deftones) and Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir (Sigur Rós) made accompanying art films for the pieces. Christopher released the epic orchestral album BARDO in 2014. BARDO charted at #12 on iTunes classical internationally and received rave reviews. The work incorporates a vast source of multicultural influences — the Tibetan Book of the Dead, archetypal symbolism from the ancient Tarot system, sound healing, and sacred geometry — narrating the path of "The Fool" through loss, despair, inspiration, destruction, death, the afterlife, and rebirth. The recording features members of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic, conducted by Teddy Abrams, recorded at Dvořák Hall in Prague, and produced by Bono with Grammy Award-winners Adam Abeshouse and Silas Brown. In 2017, after three years of isolated work, Christopher wrote, produced and released the first Ghost Against Ghost full-length album, still love. Ghost Against Ghost is Bono's ambient post-rock moniker. Subsequent collaborations include the improvisational NOUS ensemble (with Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica, Greg Fox, Shahzad Ismaily, and others), Nous Alpha with legendary electronic producer Gareth Jones, the Gabbarein duo with Norwegian vocalist Cecilie Hafstad, and the ambient project Tsyphur Zalan. His extensive meditation practice — including time as a meditation teacher — informs his later work, which moves more deeply into Buddhist concepts and the theory of mind, including the development of immersive installations such as Warmheartedness.

Releases