But he had never heard a bass played this way. At first he thought the turntable was too fast. He used to tell bassists they were in the wrong business. Now he was quickly hooked. Moving to Paris, he began playing with world class people and during a festival in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, Israel, the guitarist Mike Stern encouraged him to move to New York.
Timing is everything.
Since then he has played the bass guitar with Bob James, Paul Simon, Harry Connick Jr, Chaka Khan and the Brecker Brothers. For two years, he was arranger and musical director for the singer Harry Belafonte. Bona attracted the attention of musicians with the Zawinul Syndicate, led by the ex leader of Weather Report. He and Austrian Joe Zawinul, who also lives in New York now, worked as a duo in Texas last month. He produced an album by the Japanese saxophone star Sadao Watanabe and is starting his own production company.