jonas reingold
Jonas Reingold has been the bass player with The Tangent for most of it's life, missing only two of the albums. He's, along with Andy, one of the original founder members - and also probably the most widely known musician in his own right in the band.
With a CV that includes The Flower Kings, The Steve Hackett Band, Kaipa and many others, Jonas has become one of the most celebrated bass players in Progressive Rock and Fusion. An equivalant in the current era to the roles of Squire or Pastorius in the 1970s - both of whom are firmly represented in his own stylistic repertoire.
Brought in by Roine Stolt to play the bass on "a project by an English guy" - Jonas's debut as bass player with The Tangent was recorded before he had even properly met Andy, They'd been in a room together once, but not spoken beyond a "hi". Around 6 months after the album was released, they met at a Flower Kings gig in England. "Hello Jonas" said Andy. "Hello" said Jonas "and who are you?"
He has a big personality that is known and enjoyed by audiences worldwide and equally enjoyed by the other musicians he works with - this is a balancing act that many people find hard to pull off. Jonas does it with class.
As a bass player, Jonas excels in the art of counterpoint providing bass lines that add not just the driving forward motion, but the up/down motion of running lines and harmonic locking. It's another axis on which to work, and an axis that works particularly well in music of the kind produced by the Tangent
Jonas is a band leader too - his own band Karmakanic is often thought of as a sibling band with The Tangent. the two bands are similar in the way the music works, but there is a massive difference in the overall sound. That difference though, did not stop the two bands hooking up together and - under the name Tangekanic touring Europe and the USA on two tours in 2014 and 2017. On the second of these tours, the company stopped the practise of doing a Karmakanic Set and a Tangent set, but played the songs as the set of one band.
In The Tangent, Jonas calls on a lot of his influences and as well as the most obvious references to prog bass of days gone by, he has capitalised on the band's interest in Funk, Disco and Dance music to say nothing of the Jazz Rock pieces that have been becoming more frequent in the band's more recent albums.
Andy Tillison says "when you work with someone like Jonas, you become aware of what the possibilities actually are. You then have to up your game yourself in order to get the most out of what's on offer."
Jonas admires things that are beautifully made, and it's the same with music. His early love of rock and roll came through bands like Kiss, discovering Yes much later when they were in the "Big Generator" Era... and he loved those pristine production records at face value without the baggage many if us were carrying. If it's well done, whether Muse, Bruno Mars, Joni Mitchell or Eminem, Jonas wants to learn from it.
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