Michel Donato et ses amis Québécois Michel Donato

• 1For Prez04:50
• 2Special Love05:33
• 3Just So03:57
• 4Djuni05:08
• 5Retour04:29
• 6Petite brise05:43
• 7Never Met Her04:19
• 816 Juin04:04
• 9Départ08:38
• Total Runtime46:41

Info for Michel Donato et ses amis Québécois

Contrary to what the title of his previous recordings on Effendi (Michel Donato et ses amis européens, vol. Effendi (Michel Donato and his European friends, vol. 1 and 2, FND050 and FND072, released in 2004 and 2014), the inescapable Montreal double bassist does not only have friends across the Atlantic.

On album, released in time for his eightieth birthday, he is back with some local friends. with a few local friends. And not just any friends!

Surrounded by saxophonist Frank Lozano, pianist François Bourassa and drummer Pierre Tanguay, Donato offered us two superb tributes to the man he briefly rubbed shoulders with on stage forty on stage forty-five years ago and whom he likes to call the "Chopin of jazz": Autour de Bill Evans (Effendi FND 112, 2011); and Re: Bill Evans (Malasartes, MAM 031, 2018). On Michel Donato and his Quebec friends, music lovers will find the finesse of the arrangements, the cohesion of the group the cohesion of the group and the fluidity of the message that made their previous opuses so successful. By appropriating standards associated with Evans and compositions by the pianist, this quartet wanted to, Pierre Tanguay says, "to do a beautiful project, something classic; [...] a pure form of jazz. pure form of jazz.

Frank Lozano, saxophone
François Bourassa, piano
Michel Donato, double bass
Pierre Tanguay, drums

Michel Donato
Bassist, composer, singer, b Montreal 25 Aug 1942. His father, Roland, was a saxophonist and dance band leader. The younger Donato studied bass ca 1958-61 at the CMM with Roger Charbonneau then privately with Thomas Martin and played occasionally in the early 1960s with the MSO, but has made his career as a jazz and studio musician in Montreal, save for a period 1969-77 in Toronto. He worked frequently at the Jazz Hot and the Jazztek during the 1960s with Pierre Leduc, Lee Gagnon, and others, often playing in tandem with the drummer Claude Ranger. Donato was a member 1968-9 of the Montreal trio Aquarius Rising with Ranger and Brian Barley, and later worked with Ranger in Toronto clubs under the leadership of Lenny Breau and others. During his Toronto years he also was heard in the trios of Carol Britto and Bernie Senensky accompanying US musicians at Bourbon Street and toured internationally 1972-3 as a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio. He played occasionally during the 1970s in Toronto and Montreal with Bill Evans but declined an offer to join the US pianist's trio.

Booklet for Michel Donato et ses amis Québécois