Joćo Donato

E Lala Lay-E

Brazilian Music

Café Com Pćo
with Eloir De Moraes

Simply put, Joao Donato is one of the Bossa Nova masters as a composer and as an original pianist -- no more or no lesser than Jobim. This is a piano-bass-drums trio program with Eloir on drums. Donato's original and master command on piano is the featured item on this CD. Highly recommendable. --an Amazon reviewer
 

E Lala Lay-E
(2001)

Joćo Donato
arranged and conducted by Deodato
(1973)

This is really a Deodato record, Joao Donato having laid down basic keyboard tracks and promptly hightailed it back to Brazil, leaving Deodato and studio players to flesh out the rest. My dad used to play this record all the time when I was a kid, so I have a sentimental attachment to it, although I could see somebody not really caring for it. No matter, Joao Donato is an awesome pianist-composer-arranger whose best work is mostly unavailable (he's a jazz musician who accidentally pioneered bossa in the mid-50s and then moved to California where he played with all the Latin-jazz elite). Look for the Japanese imports of "Bud Shank & His Brazilian Friends" (1964) and "Quem E Quem" (1973), and petition Blue Thumb/Universal to reissue 1970's scandalously funky "A Bad Donato." --an Amazon reviewer

A Brazilian musician and composer of almost mythical proportions, Joćo Donato is one of the surviving - and still prospering - members of a generation that produced Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joćo Gilberto, Manfredo Fest, Luiz Eēa and many other masters associated with the heyday of bossa nova. The impish pianist, known for his deliberate, single-note musings and catchy compositions, is, along with Gilberto and Jobim, one of a small handful of artists whose sound defines bossa. In the United States in the 1960s, he worked with Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader, and Bud Shank, while at home in Rio in the '70s, he collaborated with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and other younger writers. The fondly recalled 1973 New York session featuring Randy Brecker, Airto, Ray Barretto, and Eumir Deodato, reissued on 32 Jazz as Joćo Donato, radiates all the funky spirit of the crossover Brazilian jazz of that era. --JazzIz magazine