(Rio de Janeiro) The Brazilian singer and composer Joao Donato, one of the pioneers of bossa-nova, died Monday at the age of 88 in Rio de Janeiro, announced his entourage.
“Today, the paradise of composers woke up happier: Joao Donato went there to play his magnificent melodies”, can we read in a press release published on the official Instagram account of the musician.
The cause of death was not specified in the statement, but he had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia and had been intubated since last week, according to local media.
Singer, composer, pianist, accordionist and musical arranger, Joao Donato was less in the spotlight than other icons like Joao Gilberto or Tom Jobim, but he was a reference for a large number of Brazilian artists.
The wake will be held at the Municipal Theater in Rio de Janeiro, the city where he grew up, having moved as a child with his family from his hometown of Rio Branco, in the Amazon state of Acre.
It was in Rio that he began his musical career, becoming a figure of bossa-nova, a musical genre that revolutionized Brazilian music at the end of the 1950s, giving it a worldwide audience.
He is the author of legendary compositions, such as minha saudade (1962) with Joao Gilberto, the emblematic bossa nova singer and guitarist, who died in 2019.
His first album, Dancing Cha (1956), with his group Joao Donato e seu Conjunto, was produced by Tom Jobim.
A versatile artist, Joao Donato never wanted to confine himself to a single musical genre.
“I am not bossa-nova, samba, jazz, rumba or forró. In fact, I am all of that at the same time, ”he said in 2014, in a daily interview. O Globo.
His talent was recognized worldwide, with numerous international tours, and he lived for ten years in the United States.
“He was one of the geniuses of Brazilian music. We lost today one of our best composers, one of the most creative […]who marked the history of the music of our country with his compositions that have traveled the world”, reacted on Twitter the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In June, Brazil had already lost another icon of bossa nova, Astrud Gilberto, the interpreter of Girl from Ipanema.