João Donato de Oliveira Neto is a Brazilian jazz

Brazilian jazz

Brazilian Jazz may refer to:*Bossa nova*Samba jazz like Zimbo Trio and other Bossa Nova and samba influenced jazz bands.*Brazilian influenced forms of Jazz fusion....

 and bossa nova

Bossa nova

Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music. Bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially consisting of young musicians and college students...

 pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 from Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, probably best known for his numerous albums as bandleader

Bandleader

A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

 in the idiom. He first worked with Altamiro Carrilho

Altamiro Carrilho

Altamiro Carrilho is a Brazilian musician, composer and western concert flautist.-Discography:* Juntos * Millenium * Flauta Maravilhosa...

, and went on to perform with other masters of the idiom such as Tom Jobim, Astrud Gilberto

Astrud Gilberto

Astrud Gilberto is a Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer. She is well known for the Grammy Award-winning song "The Girl from Ipanema".-Biography:...

, as well as a host of others.

João Donato de Oliveira Neto was born in Rio Branco

Rio Branco

Rio Branco is a Brazilian city, capital of Acre. Located in the Valley of Acre in northern Brazil, it is the most populous county in the state, with 305,954 inhabitants, according to a 2009 estimate - almost half the state population....

, the capital of the state of Acre, Brazil, on August 17, 1934. His father, also called João Donato, was a pilot and in his leisure hours liked to play the mandolin at home. His mother sang and the eldest sister, Eneyda, turned out to be a pianist. The youngest, Lysias, was more inclined to letters and became the main partner in his brother’s compositions.

Early life

João’s first instrument was an accordion, on which he composed his first piece, the waltz “Nini”, at the age of eight. Before his 12th birthday, his father gave him 24 and 120-bass accordions. In 1945, Donato senior was transferred and the family had to leave Rio Branco heading to Rio de Janeiro.

The musical circuit consisted of parties at the schools of Tijuca and neighboring areas. He tried his luck on TV on Ary Barroso’s talent search program. Intransigent, Ary emphatically refused to hear him, with the allegation that he “did not like child prodigies”. Luckily, there were more attentive ears.

Becoming a professional in 1949, at the age of 15, Donato’s resume already showed the mythological jam-sessions held at singer Dick Farney’s place and at the Sinatra-Farney Fan Club, of which he was a member. Johnny Alf, Nora Ney, Dóris Monteiro, Paulo Moura and even Jô Soares

Jô Soares

José Eugênio Soares, best known as Jô Soares is a Brazilian comedian, talk show host, author, theatrical producer, director, actor, painter and musician. Soares was born in Rio de Janeiro...

, on bongos, were among the components of these vitaminized jams.

On his first recording date, joining flutist Altamiro Carrilho’s band, Donato plays accordion on the two tracks of the 78 RPM: Ernesto Nazareth’s “Brejeiro”, and “Feliz aniversário”, by Altamiro himself. Soon after he migrates to violinist Fafá Lemos’ band, as a substitute for Chiquinho do Acordeon.

From 1953, now as a piano player, Donato begins to lead his own instrumental groups, – Donato e seu Conjunto, Donato Trio, the group Os Namorados – with whom he launches on 78 RPM

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 instrumental versions of American and Brazilian music

Music of Brazil

The music of Brazil encompasses various regional music styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. After 500 years of history, Brazilian music developed some unique and original styles such as samba, zouk-lambada, lambada, choro, bossa nova, frevo, maracatu, MPB, sertanejo,...

 standards (such as “Tenderly”, a Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

 hit) and (“Se acaso você chegasse”, by Lupicinio Rodrigues, a samba composer from the state of Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...

).

Career

Three years later, Odeon assigns a novice arranger to carry out the musical direction of “Chá Dançante” (1956), Donato and his band’s first LP album. A certain Antonio Carlos Jobim – who later on would have an airport named after him – would be the director of this pilot son’s album. The repertoire chosen by Jobim was to really take off at any debutants’ ball: “No rancho fundo” (Lamartine Babo – Ary Barroso

Ary Barroso

Ary Barroso was a Brazilian composer, pianist, soccer commentator, and talent-show host on radio and TV...

), “Carinhoso” (Pixinguinha

Pixinguinha

Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Jr., better known as Pixinguinha was a composer, arranger, flautist and saxophonist born in Rio de Janeiro. Pixinguinha is considered one of the greatest Brazilian composers of popular music, particularly within the genre of music known as choro...

 – João de Barro), “Baião” (Luiz Gonzaga – Humberto), “Peguei um Ita no norte” (Dorival Caymmi).

Afterwards, Donato spends two years in São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

. Back in Rio, the Bossa Nova had broken out. João Gilberto

João Gilberto

João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, known as João Gilberto , is a Brazilian singer and guitarist. His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre of Bossa nova in the late 1950s.-Biography:From an early age, music...

 himself said here and there that he had picked up his revolutionary guitar beat while watching Donato play the piano. In that same year 1958, he records “Minha saudade” and “Mambinho”, written in partnership between the two Joãos, Donato and Gilberto.

Invited by Nanai (a former member of the band Os Namorados) he leaves Brazil for a six-week season at a casino in Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the United States. At a surface elevation of , it is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is , making it the USA's second-deepest...

 (Nevada). Donato contextualised the influence of Jazz, integrated Caribbean music

Caribbean music

The music of the Caribbean is a diverse grouping of musical genres. They are each syntheses of African, European, Indian and native influences, largely created by descendants of African slaves...

 into the orchestras of Mongo Santamaría

Mongo Santamaría

Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez was an Afro-Cuban Latin jazz percussionist. He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All...

, Johnny Martinez, Cal Tjader

Cal Tjader

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader was a Latin jazz musician, though he also explored various other jazz idioms. Unlike other American jazz musicians who experimented with the music from Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, he never abandoned it, performing it until his...

 and Tito Puente

Tito Puente

Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...

. He even went on tour with João Gilberto around Europe.

1962, time to return to Brazil. Just in time to compose two classic, ever fashionable set pieces of the Brazilian instrumental music – “Muito à vontade” (1962) and “A Bossa muito moderna de João Donato” (1963), both with Polydor, reissued in the early 2000s on CD by Dubas. Donato at the piano, Milton Banana on drums, Tião Neto on bass and Amaury Rodrigues, percussion.

On the CD reissue liner notes for “Muito à vontade”, journalist Ruy Castro wrote: “it was his first album at the piano and actually the first real one, with nine of his compositions among the 12 tracks (...). Donato, who was living in the United States during the Bossa Nova boom, was already a legend among the younger musicians – to some, for the stories they heard, he would be something like the curupira (in Brazilian folklore, a bogey-man whose feet point backwards) or the water snake. This album widened their new horizons and put Donato back into a movement that, without knowing it, he had helped to create”. Here we find: “Muito à vontade”, “Minha saudade”, “Sambou, sambou”, “Jodel”.

“A Bossa muito moderna” introduces some originally instrumental themes which, many years later (and with lyrics added), would be mandatory in every Brazilian pop music songbook. Among them “Índio perdido”, that would become “Lugar comum”, when Gilberto Gil

Gilberto Gil

Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira , better known as Gilberto Gil or , is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment...

 wrote its lyrics. Gil is also a partner in the lyrics that would make “Villa Grazia” become “Bananeira”. The we have “Silk Stop”,the original theme upon which Martinho da Vila

Martinho da Vila

Martinho da Vila is a Brazilian samba musician...

 would write “Gaiolas Abertas”. The influence of Cuban music is evident in “Bluchanga”, from the time when Donato played with Mongo Santamaría.

Afterwards Donato packs his bags and returns to the USA. This time, the season would last for almost a decade. He worked with Nelson Riddle

Nelson Riddle

Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...

, Herbie Mann

Herbie Mann

Herbert Jay Solomon , better known as Herbie Mann, was a Jewish American jazz flutist and important early practitioner of world music...

, Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, Cal Tjader, Bud Shank

Bud Shank

Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank, Jr. was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and throughout the decade worked in various small jazz combos. He spent the 1960s as a first...

, Armando Peraza

Armando Peraza

Armando Peraza is a Latin jazz percussionist. Through his long associations with jazz pianist George Shearing, vibraphonist Cal Tjader and guitarist Carlos Santana, he has been internationally known from the 1950s through to the 1990s...

, etc. Alongside João Gilberto, Jobim, Moacir Santos, Eumir Deodato

Eumir Deodato

Eumir Deodato is a Brazilian pianist, composer, record producer and arranger, primarily based in the jazz realm but who historically has been known for eclectic melding of big band and combo jazz with varied elements of rock/pop, R&B/funk, Brazilian/Latin, and symphonic or orchestral music.Mainly,...

, Sérgio Mendes

Sergio Mendes

Sérgio Santos Mendes is a Brazilian musician. He has released over thirty-five albums, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk....

 and Astrud Gilberto, Donato was a key player for the team that would really make Brazil internationally recognized for its music.

“Piano of João Donato: The new sound of Brazil” (1965) and “Donato / Deodato” (1973) were released by RCA and Muse Records but were not released in Brazil at the time. However, the album that better represents the second American season is “A Bad Donato” (1970), recorded for Blue Thumb, a California-based label, and relaunched on CD by Dubas. Recorded in Los Angeles, “A Bad Donato” condenses funk, psychedelia, soul music

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

, Afro-Cuban

Afro-Cuban

The term Afro-Cuban refers to Cubans of Sub Saharan African ancestry, and to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community...

 sounds and jazz fusion

Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...

. A groovy, poisoned-sound dancing Donato, – highly wired with the Californian dream’s experimentalism

Experimentalism

Experimentalism may mean:*The philosophical belief that experiments yield truth; empiricism*The philosophical belief that truth is evaluated based upon its demonstrated usefulness; instrumentalism* Experimental literature*Experimental theatre...

 - considered as one of the 100 best albums of all times by the Rolling Stone magazine.

Christmas of 1972, Donato was back in Rio and visited composer Marcos Valle. There he met singer Agostinho dos Santos, who suggested to Donato that he should work on lyrics for his songs. This opened the flood gates for Donato’s irresistible themes to receive the status of popular song. Valle took the chance to invite him to record a new album in Brazil, with its repertoire taken from this new collection on songs. João was back, absolutely reinvented.

Donato tells journalist Lia Baron how it happened: “I was going to record an instrumental in a few days and Agostinho dos Santos said: ‘Are you recording playing the piano again? Everybody has heard it before. If I were you, I’d record singing”. Suggestion accepted, Donato is no longer an exclusive instrumentalist and becomes a full member of the Musica Popular Brasileira

Música Popular Brasileira

Música Popular Brasileira or MPB designates a trend in post-Bossa Nova urban popular music. It is not a discrete genre but rather a constellation that combines original songwriting and updated versions of traditional Brazilian urban music styles like samba and samba-canção with contemporary...

 - BRAZILIAN POP MUSIC. In addition to Gil, Martinho and Lysias, Chico Buarque

Chico Buarque

Francisco Buarque de Hollanda , popularly known as Chico Buarque , is a singer, guitarist, composer, dramatist, writer and poet...

, Caetano Veloso

Caetano Veloso

Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...

, Cazuza

Cazuza

Agenor Miranda Araújo Neto, better known as Cazuza was a Brazilian composer and singer, born in Rio de Janeiro. Along with Raul Seixas, Renato Russo and Os Mutantes, Cazuza is considered one of the best exponents of Brazilian rock music....

, Arnaldo Antunes

Arnaldo Antunes

Arnaldo Antunes , is a writer and composer from Brazil. He began as a member of the band Aguilar e Banda Performática in the late 1970s. For most of the 1980s he was a member of the rock band Titãs. After 1992 he had six solo albums. Since 1992 he has been an award winning poet, but he was first...

, Aldir Blanc

Aldir Blanc

Aldir Blanc is a famous Brazilian author of crônicas [journalistic vignettes, chronicles] and lyricist. He co-composed many songs with singer-songwriterJoão Bosco, guitarist Guinga, and others....

, Paulo César Pinheiro, Ronaldo Bastos, Abel Silva, Geraldo Carneiro and even the poet Haroldo de Campos

Haroldo de Campos

Haroldo de Campos was a Brazilian poet, critic, and translator. He did his secondary education at the College of St. Benedict, where he learned the first foreign language, like Latin, English, Spanish and French...

 and phono audiologist and writer Pedro Bloch became João’s partners.

“Quem é quem”, released by EMI in 1973 includes the tracks “Terremoto”, “Chorou, chorou” (both with lyrics by Paulo César Pinheiro”), “Até quem sabe” (with Lysias), “Cadê Jodel?” (with Marcos Valle). Even Dorival Caymmi

Dorival Caymmi

Dorival Caymmi was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actor, and painter active for more than 70 years beginning in 1933...

 contributes an unpublished, “Cala a boca, Menino”. In a letter to João Gilberto, on September 13, 1973, Donato cannot hide his enthusiasm: “It’s my best recorded work to date, taking into account the time it took, which explains the maximum care given to everything on it. And the outcome is an album that I find simply adorable”. It was also considered as one of the 100 best albums in all times by the Rolling Stone magazine. In 2008 “Quem é Quem” was the subject of a TV program entirely dedicated to him by Canal Brasil, presented by Charles Gavin; and of a book written by producer and musician Kassin.

The next album, “Lugar comum” (1975), on Philips, continues with a Donato as vocalist, with most of the repertoire consisting of former instrumental themes now with lyrics. There are partnerships with Caetano Veloso (“Naturalmente”), Gutemberg Guarabyra (“Ê menina”) and Rubens Confete (“Xangô é de Baê”) and eight songs with Gil, among them, “Tudo tem”, “A bruxa de mentira”, “Deixei recado”, “Que besteira”, “Emoriô” and at least two standards to any anthology of popular song: the title-track and “Bananeira”.

On the text he prepared for the CD reissue of “Lugar comum”, on the Dubas label, Donato revisits one summer day in the 70’s, at Caetano’s home. He had become closer to the group of Bahian stars and had even been the musical director of Gal Costa’s show “Cantar”, recorded on album the previous year: “Everybody was there: Bethânia, Gal, Caetano with Dedé and Moreno (...). They had my two albums “Muito à vontade” and “A bossa muito moderna” and I always teased them, challenging them to make up some lyrics. When this melody started playing, Gil improvised “bananeira não sei / bananeira sei lá (...)”. Then I said: “quintal do seu olhar”. And he said: “olhar do coração. It was just like ping-pong on the second part”.

Remember the tour to Europe Donato made with João Gilberto, soon after the first American season? Well, it was in a small Italian village that the banana tree was planted. Donato explains: “The first lyrics to my songs appeared as part of those already recorded instrumental themes, which I thought never would have words. “Bananeira” was “Villa Grazia”, the name of the small inn where we stayed at Lucca, in Italy, supporting João Gilberto in a residency (...). Ninety percent of my instrumental songs have changed their names, because of the lyrics being added”.

Hiatus

After that period time, almost twenty years passed without Donato recording. The mainstream of the time seemed not to absorb what, luckily, the pop artists started to see in the 90’s. João’s return to the album world happened in 1996 (he had released only the live instrumental album, “Leilíadas”, on Philips, in 86), with the album “Coisas tão simples”, produced by João Augusto, for EMI. The album brought us “Doralinda”, a partnership with Cazuza

Cazuza

Agenor Miranda Araújo Neto, better known as Cazuza was a Brazilian composer and singer, born in Rio de Janeiro. Along with Raul Seixas, Renato Russo and Os Mutantes, Cazuza is considered one of the best exponents of Brazilian rock music....

, in addition to new collaborations with Lysias (“Fonte da saudade”), Norman Gimbel (“Everyday”), Toshiro Ono (“Summer of temptation”).

Ever since, Donato has been launching his albums mainly with three independent labels: On Almir Chediak ‘s Lumiar: “Café com pão” (with drummer Eloir de Moraes, 1997); “Só danço samba” (1999); the three volumes of the Songbook collection (1999), along with “Remando na raia” (2001), a meeting with Emilio Santiago (2003) and the reencounter with Maria Tita (2006). For Deckdisc, he made “Ê Lalá Lay-Ê” (2001), “Managarroba” (2002) and the instrumental “O piano de João Donato”, produced by rock singer Rafael Ramos, in addition to the album recorded with Wanda Sá (2003).

For Biscoito Fino, he recorded the instrumental meetings with Paulo Moura (“Dois panos pra manga”, 2006) and Bud Shank (“Uma tarde com”, this also on DVD). Donato also made the DVD “Donatural” (2005), for Biscoito Fino where he hosts – on a live recording at the Espaço Sérgio Porto, in Rio – several generations of partners: from Gilberto Gil to DJ Marcelinho da Lua; from Emilio Santiago to Marcelo D2; from Leila Pinheiro to Joyce

Joyce (singer)

Joyce Silveira Moreno, commonly known as Joyce is a Brazilian singer/songwriter, as well as an accomplished guitarist and arranger. She was born in Rio de Janeiro on 31 January 1948...

, even Ângela Rô Rô

Angela Ro Ro

Ângela Maria Diniz Gonçalves , best known by the stage name Ângela Rô Rô, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter influenced by her idols Ella Fitzgerald, Maysa Matarazzo and Jacques Brel...

and his own son Donatinho, wild on keyboards and samplers.

In 2007, the American writer Allen Thayer writes, among the twelve pages he wrote about João for Wax Poetics, the New York Jazz magazine: “João Donato deserves a place among the legends of Brazilian music, alongside Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi, Ary Barroso and many others, despite his (...) experimentation with several genres of music turning any attempt to classify him into a challenge”.

In turn, blogger Alexandre Carvalho dos Santos is not concerned with classification. On a text posted on the internet, he suggests Donato’s music as a form for healing depression: “I recommend a João Donato gig not only to someone who is interested in first class music, an impressive pianist and a selection of historic compositions. I recommend it to anyone who needs an anti-depressive, an acupuncture session or any such other form of deep relaxation. I had my dose on a Sunday evening, from a show in São Paulo. A perfect timing to start a week believing that happiness exists, in spite of your boss”.

João Donato lives in the Urca neighborhood, in Rio. He is married to journalist Ivone Belém. He is the father of Jodel, Joana and Donatinho.

External links

• "Discovering João Donato" - a comprehensive site on Donato as well as a pictorial discography. João Donato himself contributes items to this website.