João Donato de Oliveira Neto was born on 1934 in Brazil, the son of a military father. Still a teenager, he demonstrated more musical than scholastic ability and so left school in 1949. He lived with fellow musicians, played guitar in the bars of Rio de Janeiro and, of course, talked about music. In the 1950s he visited the Sinatra-Farney Fan Clube, considered by many specialists as the school that created the Bossa Nova. Donato befriended individuals such as João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes, Johny Alf, and others, although he never recorded with them. Instead, he was a musician who played for himself. Also in 1950s João Donato went to United States and stayed for 13 years. This visit gave him the opportunity to incorporate African-Cuban music with Jazz. Donato record the disc A Bad Donato and wrote such pieces as Amazonas, A Rã and Cadê Jodel. He returned to Brazil and rediscovered Brazilian music while maintaining his passion for the fusion with Jazz and Caribbean rhythms. As an arranger he participated in recordings of the great names of Brazilian popular music such as Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil.
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