YOU NEVER PLAYED LIVE IN PARIS BEFORE, WHY?
Paris is a city which I have missed all my life and my life is Paris. So I am glad to be here. I was never invited and I would never have been able to come to Paris just for a walk. With the inauguration of the Portinari painting (Guerre et Paix, at the Grand Palais museum, during spring 2014) and after being invited by Marta Suplicy, the Minister of Culture, I finally had an opportunity to come.

WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?
I come from Acre, a region located in the Amazonia, far from big cities, near Bolivia and Peru. I was born there, my father was a major from the military police. He became the first single-engine aircraft pilot in Acre – comme Saint Exupéry – and he discovered many corners of the Amazonia, places where nobody had ever been before.

DID HE TAKE YOU WITH HIM ON THOSE TRIPS?
Yes, and I wanted to become a pilot too, although I have always liked music. At the age of 5, my parents bought me a small accordion for Christmas and I began playing with it, simple things like «Tatalatatati»…

DID YOU LEARN BY YOURSELF ?
Yes, instinctively, with my sister who was three years older than me and played the piano at the house, «Doodoodoodidididoo»… Every morning, I used to wake up with the sound of her piano and, as soon as she had finished, I would play some myself. The piano was a Bechstein, made in Germany. My last birthday present was actually a Fritz Dobbert piano. He is a Brazilian of German origin who makes pianos in São Paulo. They are made with curupixa, a typical wood from the Acre.

WHAT WERE THE FIRST SONGS YOU LISTENED TO WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD? SONGS WITH AN AMAZONIAN TOUCH?
Yes! It was on the river bank, I got sentimental, melancholic but also nostalgic for the first time of my life. Those feelings were strange for a child who is either happy or sad most of the times.

WAS IT IN A CITY?
Yes, it is now the capital Rio Branco and even if it is small, it is filled with singular, strong characters. For instance, fashion doesn’t matter, we are not searching for the trendy things you can see on television. People from the Acre have their own style, their own life, their own originality. That is why I am so proud of being from there. Maybe this is what brought me to become a pilot at the age of 18, just like my father.

WHEN DID YOU ARRIVE IN RIO?
At 11, by boat, just after the Second World War, in 1945. My father had been offered a trip to any place in Brazil and he thought that Rio was the best place for me and my brothers to study.

WAS THE MUSICAL SCENE IN RIO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ONE IN THE AMAZONIA?
Yes, it was something else! A city with artists which I knew only through 78rpm records, but who were still in my memory. I liked songs such as “O Mar Negro, The Black Sea” by Georges Boulanger or «Ti di the dida diladidi !» a sort of jewish / gypsy melody which makes you feel oriental. My father had a collection of those records and I used to play them all the time.

2014, Paris. In bed or embed with João Donato?

WAS IT IN RIO THAT YOU DISCOVERED JAZZ?
No. At that time I was more into listening to Georges Boulanger and Fritz Kreisler, an Austrian violinist who played ‘Chagrin d’Amour’. With my high school classmates, we used to have lunch listening to records. One day, I heard Stan Kenton for the first time, and I was really impressed. He wasn’t the most popular, but his music was the strangest, the most exotic, dissonant music I had ever heard.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A MUSICIAN? DID YOU MAKE THIS DECISION BY YOURSELF?
It happened when I failed the test to become a pilot : I was colorblind. I was 18. When the doctor told me that I couldn’t become a pilot, I thought «Well, I am a musician, I am going to continue in music, study and dedicate myself to music.» Luckily, my father supported me.

AT THAT TIME, WHAT BRAZILIAN PIANISTS WERE YOU LISTENING TO?
All those I shared my time with… I liked going to night clubs or listen to the radio because I didn’t have a TV yet. Most radios had their own bands, their own vocal groups, singers…

Young João Donato and his band at national radio.

ONE OF YOUR MAIN INFLUENCES WAS JOHNNY ALF, DID YOU KNOW HIM?
He was my friend when we were young. I met him when I was 15 or 16. He was my neighbour. He was a bit older. At that time I also knew Tom Jobim, João Gilberto …

YOU MET TOM JOBIM WHEN HE WAS THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR FOR A RECORD COMPANY?
He gave me a list of songs, telling me that I had to play them. But the first time I actually recorded was for the flutist Altamiro Carrilho, on his first album. It was my first studio experience. I played the accordion on ‘Brejeiro’ with Ernesto Nazareth’s Choro. The choro is still very popular in Brazil. The first music I actually composed and recorded was with Luiz Bonfá on the “Bonfá” album. At that time, vinyl was still only on 10 inch.

YOU USED TO SPEND YOUR TIME WITH THE CREATORS OF BOSSA NOVA. HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO ENTER THE SINATRA-FARNEY FAN CLUB?
With Paulo Moura who I met in the street, we were neighbors and we both had vocal groups. At that time, vocal groups were trendy : the Starlights, the Pied Pipers, Les Double Six in Paris, Os Cariocas and João Gilberto’s Os Garotos da Lua in Brazil. I had one too : Os Namorados, with members from Lucio Alves’s Os Namorados da Lua. I went to many rehearsals with all those groups and I have always liked that kind of music : five people singing together, so beautiful with so many harmonies.

1957. João Donato and João Gilberto in the Rio’s streets.

IS THIS HOW YOU MET JOÃO GILBERTO?
I met him during the rehearsals of Garotas da Lua. It was in the Radio Tupis studios. One day someone announced the arrival of a young man from Bahia. The singers had to be real singers with strong voices but one of them had too low a voice. João Gilberto was brought in as a replacement. But when he came, we realized that his voice was even lower! Luckily this job wasn’t for him. So, he stayed in Rio, alone, and that’s how we became partners. Back then, I didn’t manage to adapt and wasn’t well received when I played, just like him. They found me too different, too «bizarre».

DO YOU STILL CONSIDER YOURSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE BOSSA NOVA MOVEMENT?
I have always made music my own way and therefore was not well received in most of the places I was playing at. All those bossa nova people were not well received either. Me, João Gilberto or Tom Jobim: none of us was welcome. But slowly, people started to get used to that sound and would like it more and more. At some point, João and I kept talking about how crazy and insane this world was, that People were stupid and knew more or less nothing about music… I remember we were invited to a week long show in Minas Gerais at a health resort. João said: «I will go there if Donato comes.» So we went together, him with the guitar and me with the piano. After the first set on the first night, the manager came to us and said : «Don’t worry about anything, money, traveling expenses or food, but please – “por favor”, don’t sing any more, don’t play again!» This is the type of experience we both had at the start of our careers. It was awful and we were terrible for the audiences as people were expecting something that they were more familiar with. Strong voices. Those first live experiences were a total disaster.

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AS A JAZZMAN?
The Donato style, that’s how people in Brazil describe my music. I like to avoid any classification: no categorizing, no way!

THAT’S THE DONATO STYLE?
I don’t have any style, I am just «Amazonic», a Acre homeboy, tropical, I don’t know…

WE ARE GOING TO SAY WHAT THE DONATO STYLE IS: IT IS THE VERY SAME POINT OF VIEW THAT THELONIOUS MONK HAS ON BEBOP!
I love bebop, I love Monk, I love bossa nova, I love jazz, I love latin music and I mix all those styles. I also like songs like ‘La Vie en Rose’. I compose my own songs. The Brazilian music critic Zuza Homem de Mello has compared me with Monk before.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?
I like it, because his style is really unique, incomparable. You can’t copy that! To be compared with Monk means being also unique, because he sounds like nobody else. And I like to feel that I sound like nobody else. It is very important! To be perfectly honest, my favorite pianist is Horace Silver, the son of a Portuguese man from Cabo Verde : Horácio Tavares Ward da Silva. His mother was afro-american. Once, while I attended one of his workshops in Rio with a handful of people, he told me: «It’s funny, nobody came!» and I answered that people didn’t know how important he was.

Early 1960’s. Donato played trombone with Mongo Santamaria’s band, and two years later during a record session with Tom Jobim .

MONK HAS A VERY SPECIAL WAY OF COMPOSING, JUST LIKE YOU. ON YOUR COMPOSITIONS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING A LITTLE BIZARRE, BIZARRE JAZZ, BOSSA NOVA BIZARRE, OR FUNK BIZARRE…
Ahaha it is «très bizarre». I try to reflect the feeling that I felt on the bank of the Amazone when I was a child: a combination of homesickness, melancholy and positive sadness, doucement. I try to keep that in my music. That doesn’t work every time but that is what I am looking for. When I listen to other people’s music, I try to obtain a painkiller effect, wholesome, beneficial, healthy and spiritual. That’s what I like in music.

YOU KEEP SAYING THAT MUSIC IS MADE TO CURE THE SPIRIT. IS IT YOUR MAIN PURPOSE?
It could be, for sure. To give more life, more longevity, more time to stay alive on the planet. Music takes you further, on longer roads… It even brings comfort to patients in hospitals if well used. But music can be anything, even fatal as Gilberto Gil said. There are a number of composers, music geniuses, who are considered dangerous when their music is heard on the wrong occasion. It can lead to extreme behavior: suicide, despair or eventually «the bad road». So being a genius doesn’t mean you belong to the good side of the things. You are a genius but you can be a madman too.

WHAT DID YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU LEFT BRAZIL FOR THE USA?
Freedom of expression. In Brazil I was clamped, I couldn’t play what I believed in. I found that American musicians were a lot closer from playing into this ideal of freedom and their music was really beyond what I played myself.

WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST MUSICAL FEELINGS WHEN YOU LANDED IN THE USA?
Sensational! I would go see all my idols play on stage, people like Horace Silver. We became friends and he came to Los Angeles to play the piano and help me understand ‘Django Juice’. I remember driving him back to the motel he was living in.

DID YOU GO TO SHELLY MANN’S CLUB?
Yes, I saw Sergio Mendes (Brasil 65) there, with Jorge Ben and Wanda Sá. I later asked Sergio Mendes permission to use his rhythm section and recorded an album with Bud Shank. Tião Neto was on bass, Chico Batera on drums and Rosinha de Valença on guitar. And I got another record, previously done in Brazil. It was originally called “Muito A Vontade”. I started looking for a label to put it out and showed it to Clare Fisher, Victor Feldman and all their friends from the music industry but nobody wanted it. Every time, they would tell me: «OK, OK, but», and when an American says «but»… That was until I met Richard Bock, one of the founders of Pacific Jazz who had worked with Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers and Chet Baker. After listening to my record, he said : «I like it, but ahahaha… I can’t put it out just like this, you need to bring somebody else but wait, Bud Shank is coming here tomorrow, we will have him listen to it and if he likes it, you will work together. This will be a way for you to enter the label and then I will launch your record.» I said OK and returned home. The day after, Bock told me that Bud Shank had liked the album. We agreed on a recording session and eventually recorded “The piano of João Donato, the new sound of Brazil”. This is how I got a name in American studios.

SOME YEARS LATER YOU RECORDED WITH CLAUS OGERMAN, ANOTHER IMPORTANT MEETING?
Richard Bock put out “Muito A Vontade” but changed the title to “Sambou Sambou” – he thought it sounded better. Then Astrud Gilberto gave Claus Ogerman a copy and he called me from New York asking if I wanted to do a record with him. I was supposed to play basic piano parts and he would make arrangements with very beautiful strings. «Like Tom Jobim?» I said. «Yes, why not!» He asked me to write six songs, the other six would be taken from some Brazilian music album. João Gilberto was in town, so I went to see him at his place and we wrote some songs. That record is one of my most beautiful.

Seventies… with Gal Costa.

YOU SPOKE ABOUT MELANCHOLY EARLIER. DON’T YOU BELIEVE THAT THE MASTER IN TERMS OF STRING ARRANGEMENTS IS CLAUS OGERMAN?

Yes, he is wonderful, but I also like Johnny Mandel very much.

ARE YOU STILL IN TOUCH WITH HIM?
No, not too much, I saw him with Tommy Lipuma, who produced “A Bad Donato”, before I left America.

WHAT ABOUT THE “BAD DONATO” SESSIONS FOR BLUE THUMB?
It was a different story. Sergio Mendes who was a good businessman told me one day: «Let’s go to Japan. I have 2 bands, Brasil 66 and Bossa Rio, that are opening a show and we need a pianist. Ours cannot travel anymore.» So I took up the invitation and travelled with them for a week. In turned out that Bossa Rio was about to release a record in the US for Blue Thumb’s boss Bob Krasnow who was travelling with us. Bob loved my music and promised me a record release as soon as I returned to the USA, with my own tracks. So when I got back to the US I had kind of forgotten about it until percussionist Emil Richards contacted me saying that Bob Krasnow was looking for me and that I had to call him. When I did, he told me I could have all the instruments I wanted; that I could go to any music store, buy all I needed, bring it home and that when everything would be ready, we could start recording. Just like that! I decided to go to a record store and bought some LPs. I was given a lot of shit records that did not even sound like music until I discovered James Brown. I found his music quite simple, with repetitions and loops and I loved it. I decided to try and stick to James Brown’s music. They loved it and decided to call what I did “A Bad Donato”. Tommy Lipuma said the album had good reviews when it came out. Everybody said : «Waouwou! What is going on?» Even the singer Jacques Brel himself covered ‘The Frog’. His version spoke bad about the Flemish and became a political song.

WERE YOU INFLUENCED BY BANDS LIKE BANDA BLACK RIO, GERSON KING COMBO OR UNIÃO BLACK?
No, their music might sound similar but we never met.

AFTER “A BAD DONATO”, YOU WENT BACK TO BRASIL AND RECORDED ANOTHER RECORD FOR ODEON. FOR US, IT’S AN INCREDIBLE RELEASE, A BRASILIAN FUNK CLASSIC, BUT MUCH MORE ACOUSTIC AND BIZARRE: “QUEM É QUEM”.
Très bizarre because it was the first time I sang a song.

YOU NEVER FELT THE NEED TO WRITE LYRICS BEFORE?
When I came back from the USA in 1972, I was going to do a new record in Brasil when Sao Paulo singer Agostinho Dos Santos told me: «Are you going to do another piano record? If I were you, I would add lyrics. Singers like me could sing your songs. In Brasil, nobody sings your songs because they have no lyrics!» I thought he was right and decided to start doing some singing. I got input by song writers like Dorival Caymmi, my brother Lysias Ênio, the Valle brothers, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, João Carlos Pádua, the Borges brothers and a whole bunch of others.

ON THAT ALBUM, THERE IS THIS INCREDIBLE SONG ‘CALA A BOCA MENINO’, WHO IS THAT «MENINO»?
It’s actually a typical folk song from Bahia. I was in the studio doing some experiments like «Dadidoo loopdadidoo» and did not really know where that would take me when Nana Caymmi, Dorival’s daughter, started singing «Cala a boca menino gné gné gné. Que seu pai logo vê gné gné gné…» I asked her what it was and she said it was one of her father’s songs so I called Dorival to confirm and he said : «No, it’s not but I take responsibility for it.»

Donato, a great composer.

YOUR MUSIC IS BUILT ON LOOPS LIKE THOSE OF MONK. DO YOU LOVE USING THOSE LOOPS?
I love loops. I don’t know. Stan Kenton had something with «riffs »: Blues in riff, Intermission riff, Unison Riff’, everything was a «riff» for him: «Tiloodida tiloodidooda tiloodida tiloodidooda tiloodida tiloodidooda tada doo! doo doo! Again!» It was his thing, he found it beautiful. I like it too: full measures, repeated several times. He would change the orchestration every now and then, like in a ‘Bolero’. Many people think that Ravel is only repeating measures on his Bolero but they actually change many times.

IN YOUR MUSIC, AS IN MONK’S, AREN’T THEY JUST FALSE REPETITIONS?
Yes they have a good effect but they do not really repeat. My repetitions change as on Ravel’s Bolero.

YESTERDAY, DURING THE SHOW, YOU SPOKE ABOUT CLAUDE DEBUSSY AS THE GREATEST MUSICIAN. DUKE ELLINGTON USED TO SAY THE SAME THING.
Yes, for me Debussy the greatest. I have always been influenced by classical music, I had a great passion for Debussy. He gave me the strongest musical emotions. I want to visit his house, near Paris, see where he was born, where he lived. He was a huge musician. Ravel is one of my favorite, just after Debussy.

YESTERDAY YOU PLAYED A SONG INSPIRED BY DEBUSSY WITH EXCERPTS FROM ‘ESTRADA DO SOL’. DID YOU DO IT ON PURPOSE?
No, I improvise a lot in my music and «Taaaa nanana tanana tanana ninana» comes from Debussy ! He was the first modern composer to play that type of measures like «Laaaladidiladidalad», that is what we play today and he had done it for a long time.

HOW WAS THE «MODERNITY» OF DEBUSSY?
His harmonies, his colors, his expressions. I am currently working on a piece called ‘Suite Sinfônica Popular’ and I always look at his scores, trying to enter his music with mine, without changing it or interfere, I want to try and create something.

IS THAT THE MAIN PROJECT YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
Yes, I have been on it for a long time. I have spent more that 20 years checking his music and playing them on the piano.

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER CLAUDE DEBUSSY?
During my teenage years. When I started listening to his music, it was like falling in love with somebody: you don’t know why.

HAS HE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU DURING YOUR LIFE?
Yes. Actually, there was this particular piano teacher who used to tell me, when I played something that was not a known score, that there was something of Debussy in my music, something of the same standard.

thanks to Stéphane de Langenghagen