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Donna Grantis
Email Address
Grantis at UnitedWeTab.com
Location
Toronto, ON
Home Town
Toronto, ON
Instruments Played
Guitar
Favorite Playing Style
Rock, Blues, Pop, Funk, Soul-Jazz
Favorite Artists
Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Prince, Slash, Derek Trucks, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, The Black Crowes, The Dead Weather, John Scofield
Musician Bio
Donna picked up her brother's acoustic guitar as a young teenager and began shredding Guns N' Roses and Led Zeppelin songs; but the acoustic wasn't cutting it... she wanted to emulate the soaring electric guitar solos of her heroes like Hendrix, Page, Slash and Clapton. She made a deal with her dad to learn Stairway To Heaven in its entirety in exchange for a new axe. It wasn't long before she had her hands on a hot red electric. Three years later Donna was selected as a semi-finalist in the North American wide Jimi Hendrix Electric Guitar Competition. She was asked to perform her interpretation of "Red House" to a capacity crowd including Al Hendrix (Jimi's father) at a rock bar in Cleveland, Ohio. This was her first public performance.
Shortly after, Donna was awarded a music scholarship to the Jazz Performance program at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where she was exposed to the city's eclectic music scene. Donna gained invaluable experience performing with a number of projects, including blues and rock bands, jazz ensembles and fusion groups. Her studies allowed her to be engaged in composing and arranging music for big bands, woodwind octets and string sections.
Although she loved immersing herself in jazz, Donna's true passion was playing loud distorted rock guitar. Upon relocating to Toronto, she formed an original rock band that played the club scene throughout southern Ontario in support of an independently released album. Concurrently, Donna's diversity on the instrument kept her playing guitar night after night as an in demand session musician. She has played alongside R&B soul singers Divine Brown and Haydain Neale of Jacksoul, singer/songwriter Emma-Lee, Toronto funk gurus Planet Earth, virtuoso Tony McManus and guitar legend Coco Montoya among others.
Donna continues to tour throughout Canada and internationally with various artists including Canadian blues diva Shakura S'Aida and soul-rock artist Saidah Baba Talibah. Her playing has been featured on several releases, notably Shakura's most recent album, Brown Sugar produced by Jim Gaines (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana).
In addition to performing, songwriting and recording and with other artists, Donna is leading an instrumental psychedelic rock trio called the Donna Grantis Electric Band. Look out for the band's debut album later this year!
Donna plays D'Addario EXL 115 Blues/Jazz Rock 11-49 guage strings. She uses Planet Waves cables and accessories.
