Bunny Brunel is known in the jazz world for his melodic, groove-oriented music and recordings.  He has collaborated with, performed, and continues to record with some of the most recognized names on this globe.  A musician’s musician, Brunel is celebrated as a fusion giant and one of the founding fathers of the jazz bass fusion movement.  Still performing and recording great music, the internationally celebrated Bunny Brunel takes on a new role as Editor at Large of Virtuoso Bass magazine.  His passion is to recognize and pay tribute to the “top of the food chain” in the world of bass!

About Bunny Brunel:

When it comes to the bass, 2-time Grammy-nominated Bunny Brunel is the master and a musician's musician! From defining his signature style on fretless, upright, and electric basses, to authoring numerous instructional books on bass technique and theory, there is no end to Brunel’s musical mind. But how many legendary virtuoso instrumentalists do you know who not only design their instruments, but build them, too? Having designed for Carvin for over 25 years, Brunel is now a designer for ESP Guitars. He also created and custom built the Rolls Royce of basses—the Bunny Brunel Electric Upright Bass (BBEUB). As if that weren’t enough, Bunny has composed music with lush arrangements on his releases from the start of his career on his first album Touch (1978) to his two latest, titled Invent Your Future (2015) and the historical CD Bass Ball (2017) that features bass players is a co-production with Stanley Clarke; and somewhere in the middle, his Band CAB earned a Grammy nomination for CAB 2 Best Contemporary Jazz Album. He also scores films, and collaborated and performed the theme for Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning masterpiece The Unforgiven. But most importantly, Bunny is known around the world as one of the four great bassists who started the jazz-fusion bass movement (with Stanley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius, and Jeff Berlin).

Born in the South of France, Bernard Bunny Brunel’s first instrument was the piano, and because his mother was a huge jazz fan, he was exposed to jazz at a very young age. He was able to play jazz chords by ear.

"While I was attending a specialized college for hotels, I found a classical guitar, where the headstock was broken. I had it remade by a cabinetmaker friend of mine and played guitar in a band. I was about 15 years old at the time. I knew about 3 or 4 chords and that’s how it started. I was asked to rent a bass for a new bass player who never showed up for rehearsal and ended up playing the bass. That was the day I became a bass player—and I loved it!”

Bunny attended the Classical Conservatory in Nice, France, to learn bowing technique, but was mostly a self-taught bass player who drew his influences from Sam Jones, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Eddy Gomez, Miroslav Vitous, and Stanley Clarke.

In his early 20s, while playing at the world-famous Ronnie Scott’s Club in London with Tania Maria, Yes/ Moody Blues keyboardist Patrick Moraz introduced Bunny to fusion keyboardist Chick Corea. Once Chick heard Bunny play, a few months later he hired him to record on his Grammy-nominated album Secret Agent. Bunny played with Chick Corea for almost a decade, and has since played with Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Jarreau, Stevie Wonder, Ziggy Marley, Gloria Estefan, Jack De Johnette, Natalie Cole, Stanley Clarke, Milt Jackson, Steve Grossman, and countless more.

Having graced the covers of popular magazines, including(PN'P) Plug N Play, Bass Musician, Bassics; and numerous features in Bass Player, No Treble, Bassiste, For Bass Players Only, Abstract Logix, Fretless Bass, Guitar 9, Jazztimes, Global Bass Online, Talk Bass, just to name a few, Bunny Brunel also enjoys being the Editor at Large of Virtuoso Bass, the premier lifestyle magazine for bassists. This rare musician is a melodic writer; he creates memorable music with modal changes and dexterous playing. His creations transcend most recordings from the fusion genre simply because . . .even with Brunel's mind-blowing execution and profound changes —as complex as his music is—you walk away humming his tunes. But you are cheating yourself if you haven’t seen him in concert. Experiencing Bunny Brunel LIVE is transformative. And nothing compares to the auditory, sensory fulfillment, when you're drinking in a performance by this masterful bass legend!