After five years of work, the author and host Stanley Péan will publish the biography on November 21 Michel Donato. Blue on the spot, dedicated to the Montreal double bassist who has established himself as a “sacred monster of jazz”. The year 2023 is not the year in which Mr. Péan slowed down: he now has a 35-year career which is highlighted by a reissue of his first collection of short stories, The beach of dreamsas well as the publication of a new book, Postcards from beyond the world.
Mr. Donato, who still makes his instrument resonate after 65 years in the profession, joins The duty and Stanley Péan in a bistro in the metropolis, near the Théâtre de Verdure, in Parc La Fontaine, where he has already played. At the age of 81, the double bassist — who notably accompanied the illustrious pianists Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson — has lost none of his humor. He tells his long-time friend that due to the lack of parking, he should have come on horseback instead. “Do you have one?” » jokingly retorts the author, who will be present at the Montreal Book Fair held from November 22 to 26, 2023. “No, but I’m going to buy one,” he replies straight away.
The musician, who made his debut as a teenager, notably playing at balls with the orchestra of his father, Roland Donato, is characterized by his talent for catching the ball. In 1992, when he was preparing to attend the concert of Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, he was instead called upon to take the same stage to replace American double bassist Charlie Haden at short notice. “He finds himself there, without ever having played with Rubalcaba, not speaking the same language. But that’s not true, he had a common language: music,” observes Stanley Péan, who has around thirty books of all genres to his credit.
Unusual anecdotes of this type punctuate the nearly 500-page story. “Michel is one of the greatest and most important. Just to see all the people who wanted to play with him and who recruited him,” maintains the host of the show When jazz is there broadcast on ICI Musique. In this regard, he mentions a morning in 1964 when Mr. Donato hung up the line on trumpeter Miles Davis, believing his call to be a hoax.
Deadpan, Michel Donato evokes with humor the most eventful episodes of his career. An example of this is the bomb attack claimed by the Quebec Liberation Front, which occurred in 1963 at the Black Watch armory in Montreal, near the L’Enfer club, where he was performing. “It was the only time in my life that I went out with my instrument without putting on the case,” he recalls, regarding the event which caused no casualties.
Donato, a history of Quebec music
“I had a good life,” admits the double bassist, who formulates short answers to the point during the interview. He emphasizes his luck in having been able to accompany artists on stage or in the studio like Félix Leclerc, Diane Dufresne or Ginette Reno. According to Stanley Péan, writing a biography on Michel Donato is equivalent to talking about the history of Quebec music over the last six decades as a whole, and not just jazz.
Quebecers have undoubtedly all heard Mr. Donato’s notes on Paul Piché’s flagship album, The staircase (1980), or at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. According to André Ménard, co-founder of the event, the Quebec double bassist is the musician who has played there most often.
The year 2000, when he chose not to participate in this festival to go to Cape Cod, in the United States, with his partner Michèle Charland, was a fateful moment: he suffered a stroke there. . This episode also opens the book: “While he is in the ambulance, it is as if, suddenly, the memories came back to him. We go back in time. There we are in 1942 in Montreal and he is the first of a family of two children,” relates Mr. Péan.
If nothing is the same for him after this event, he will gradually regain his strength by contributing to albums, then returning to the stage, underlines the author. The latter indicates that his friend also trained several musicians as a teacher, notably at the Vincent-d’Indy music school and at McGill University. “Many current jazz double bassists who have passed through his classes bow down to him saying: “If I hadn’t had Michel as a teacher, what would my career have been?” »
We also owe to Mr. Donato compositions like Blue on the spot, which is also the title of his biography. “I can’t wait for Stanley to put lyrics to the song,” exclaims the musician. Mr. Péan retorts that he started this project without having finished it, while humming a short extract from the piece. “We had to finish the book,” he explains.
From one book to another
Through the writing of the book dedicated to the double bass player, Mr. Péan says he took on another project by writing his latest collection of short stories in the space of six months. The stories of Postcards from beyond the world were born from a bet made with the illustrator Jean-Michel Girard: “Can we make thirty-five short stories from thirty-five original illustrations”? he relates.
Mission accomplished for the author who was inspired by Mr. Girard’s retro-style images to create short stories sometimes imbued with jazz, fantasy, but also his native country, Haiti.
While working on the reissue of The beach of dreams, first published in 1988, he says he noticed that certain elements specific to his current literary style were already in place at the time. In his twenties, he was careful to use words in his stories. “I think I have evolved, I am perhaps a little less naive, less candid, but all in all, he is the same writer thirty-five years later. »
Stanley Péan will participate in a major interview conducted by Mélikah Abdelmoumen on November 24 at the SLM, and will offer signing sessions on November 24, 25 and 26.