22 February 2021
Pat Donaher is a yogi, a professor, a high school teacher, a composer, and an alto saxophonist. Like many creative musicians, he was professionally educated and is a professional through and through, but simultaneously he is using his creativity across platforms. The hustle of the modern jazz musician ain’t easy.
The effort, however, doesn’t show in Donaher’s gorgeous output. Music suffuses Donaher’s life. As a high school teacher, he leads a top ensemble of young people learning Duke Ellington and the canon. At the same time, in his personal life, Donaher uses music to engage with friends and family. Which explains the title of
It’s difficult for Bob Comtois to pinpoint when music started to become one of the driving forces of his life. But he’s pretty sure it began with his voice. Growing up in Northbridge, he recalls that, as a young boy, he had a strong desire to sing like the Everly Brothers.
“I would sing harmony along with Everly Brothers records, and I could do either part,” he said by phone from his home in Uxbridge. “So, one evening, while my mother was at work, I asked my father for a kid brother, but he told me to shut up.” (laughs)
Pat Donaher’s path to becoming a jazz saxophonist didn’t begin with that goal in mind. Growing up in Quincy, he was playing piano by 6 – his parents’ idea – and took to it. But like so many other kids before him, it wasn’t long before he started thinking about other instruments too.
“It’s typical of parents saying if you stick with piano for ‘X’ number of years, you can take another instrument,” said Donaher, 46, from his home in Watertown. “That was in the mid-’80s, a time when pop songs still had a saxophone solo. And right around that time I was listening to and really hearing (saxophonist) Charlie Parker, and that was the catalyst; hearing him play ‘Lover Man,’ I said, ‘I want to do that!’ ”
Steve Vai. For his fourth LP
Occasionally, the high school music teacher and yoga instructor takes a painterly approach to his music, shifting the emphasis away from improvisation and towards composition.
Opener “Wedding Day” displays a chamber music-like approach, with a carefully unfurled structure and a relaxed pace that allows Donaher’s musicians (particularly bassist
Tony Scherr) to find their own way through the melody and harmony. “Whoosh/Oomph” starts off with an even more atmospheric aura, but quickly pivots into a lively arrangement that draws in New Orleans funk and East Coast swing to buoy close harmony horn lines. The groovy “D2” puts a hip-swaying rhythm beneath a soulful descending melody, and lets guitarist