CHRISTOPHER BONO’S CHORAL WORKS
“UNITY” & “THE UNEXCELLED MANTRA”
Christopher Bono describes Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra as contemplating the search for a modern form of spirituality. He says, “Both works explore a path to transcendence or ‘true being’ through union with the cosmos – The Unexcelled Mantra from a Mahayana Buddhist point of view and Unity from the Western philosophical tradition of Plato.”
Unity is based on some of the musical and philosophical concepts of Plato's Republic. The chosen text was taken from a section of the Republic in which Plato discusses the power of mathematics, but Bono immediately saw it could also be viewed as a metaphor for the phenomenon of meditation: “What is absolute unity? / This is the way, / In which the study of One / has the power / of drawing and converting the Mind / to the contemplation / of True Being.”
Bono says, “This multi-dimensional observation was a key inspiration for me when writing the work, both considering the mathematical qualities of music and the esoteric concepts of achieving union with the All.” In addition, Bono experimented with the power Plato claimed existed in the Dorian and Phrygian modes. According to Plato, the Dorian would “fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare,” while the Phrygian was suitable “for a man engaged in works of peace.”
Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra were performed by The New York Virtuoso Singers, led by Harold Rosenbaum.
"New Stop-Motion Film "Unity" Is The Work Of A Potential Animation Legend."
"Constructed from over ten thousand individual photographs, Tobias Stretch's animation aligns beautifully with the power of Christopher Bono's choral work, "Unity"
Of his video for Unity, Tobias Stretch says, “Unity is about the pursuit of oneness and absolute being. The biggest challenge was how to illustrate those intense abstract ideas through animation. A dream-like world unfolds where surreal beings drift towards a point of convergence, a street character is aided by otherworldly characters (perhaps real or not) towards a point of absolute oneness. Unity is about the transcendence of being to another level.”
"Rarely do we give “Video of the Year” accolades so early, but unless Godzilla starts playing the violin – we’re pretty sure the Toby Stretch-directed and animated video for Christopher Bono’s “Unity” is it. "
“Bono, a rising name in the 21st Century Contemporary Composition scene, has quickly been garnering accolades with his refusal to bend toward traditional music-creation conformity and a strong knack for creating vivid imagery through his pure, yet distinctly zestful works.”
"Christopher Bono's spectacularly haunting unity & The unexcelled mantra EP (which even as an ep bests out many full length choral recordings in the last five years),..." ~Alto Riot , Runner-up: Best of 2013
"Paired with the music of composer Christopher Bono, the end result is a beautiful, cinematic and somewhat trippy film that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before."
Of her video for The Unexcelled Mantra, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir says, "In this video I rearranged body parts and made some hominoid- jellyfish creatures floating amidst the Icelandic landscape. They appear, linger for a little while and then float away. They represent the impermanent and transient nature of existence and how we are constantly changing and reinventing ourselves. Although there is a quality of sameness within our being, we are always growing and mutating like the strange, amorphous entities of the video."
"'Masterpiece' is a big, important word. But sometimes you just have to say it."
- Promo News
