Massimo Donà was born in Venice on October 29, 1957, and he lives two public lives at once. His main public profession is philosophy: he graduated from the University of Venice in 1981 under Emanuele Severino, worked with Massimo Cacciari on aesthetics at Venice's IUAV architecture university, co-founded the journal Paradosso with Cacciari and Romano Gasparotti, taught aesthetics at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s, and has published dozens of books. He is a full professor of theoretical philosophy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, whose listings for the 2026 to 2027 academic year include his courses on the ontology of contemporary arts and on musicology and the philosophy of music. The other life is a trumpet: the credits on his own records, a Swiss radio profile and concert photographs all show him as a trumpeter.

His music began early. According to Italian Wikipedia he debuted young beside Giorgio Gaslini and Enrico Rava, then formed his own group, Jazz Forms, which he co-led with Maurizio Caldura, and later a sextet, and he sat in at jam sessions with Dizzy Gillespie, Marion Brown, Dexter Gordon and Kenny Drew. A Donà sextet has a track on Fragile: Maneggiare con cura, 50 musicisti per Venezia (In Venice Records, 1990), a vinyl compilation of fifty Venetian acts, and he is credited on trumpet on I Bin Do by Hans & Babilonia, a Venice band whose recordings date from 1977 to 1980 and were issued on vinyl in 2018. Italian Wikipedia adds that he resumed professional playing in 2001 with a new quintet, which later became a quartet.

The recordings that followed are all on Caligola Records, a Venice-area jazz label, and they began with a live date. New Rhapsody in Blue (A Tribute to New York), taped on November 4, 2001 and issued in 2002, rebuilds Gershwin around four "themes from Rhapsody in Blue" for a sextet with David Boato on a second trumpet and Francesco Bearzatti on tenor and soprano saxophones. For Miles and Miles (2003, recorded in October 2002) brought in the singer Tiziana Ghiglioni for one piece and the pianist Marcello Tonolo for another. Spritz (2004) added the singer Cheryl Porter and the guitarist Andrea Braido as guests. In March 2004 the quintet also played a live date with Tony Pagliuca and David Jackson, two names from progressive rock, issued on the small E-motion label as Re-Collage. Cose dell'altro mondo. Bi Sol Mi Fa Re (2006), recorded that summer, closes with a seven-part "Suite Filosofica."

In 2008 and 2009 the records began to travel with books. Ahmbè (2008) was packaged with his volume on the philosophy of wine, L'anima del vino, and Big Bum (I ritmi della creazione) (2009) came in a box with his book of the same subtitle. Big Bum is a quartet record with the saxophonist Michele Polga, Bebo Baldan on keyboards and synthesizer bass, and the drummer Davide Ragazzoni, with the cellist Paolo Damiani on five tracks, and its credits include spoken fragments by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and André Breton, plus the art critic Achille Bonito Oliva and the philosopher Giulio Giorello. The pairing of jazz and philosophy then went public in print: La filosofia di Miles Davis (Mimesis, 2015) was followed by volumes on the Beatles in 2018, the Rolling Stones in 2023 and Lucio Battisti in 2025.

His later albums lean on text. Il santo che vola (2016), recorded in January 2016 in Mira near Venice, is a trio with Polga and Ragazzoni, and Donà plays trumpet, piano, harmonica and flute on it besides speaking; its subject is the friar Joseph of Cupertino, remembered in tradition as the flying saint. Iperboliche distanze (Le parole di Andrea Emo) (2020, recorded in 2018 and 2019) sets the writings of the Italian philosopher Andrea Emo, whose posthumous work Donà co-edits, with guests who include Claudio Fasoli on soprano and tenor saxophones, Enrico Rava on flugelhorn on one track, Damiani, the vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra and the singer and writer David Riondino. Magister Puck (2021) followed, and Frammentità (2022), a suite on poems by Carlo Invernizzi, is the most recent album listed for him on Discogs and AllMusic. Spotify's credits on its track "Pitù" name Mauro Ottolini, Michele Polga, Stefano Olivato and Davide Ragazzoni beside him.

Italian Wikipedia describes his language as a bop idiom that grew into more articulated writing, taking in rock and a range of ethnic musics along the way, and the records bear that out: electric bass and keyboards in the quintet years, guitarists such as Braido on Spritz and Magister Puck, a jazz-funk tag on Discogs for Il santo che vola, and a standing habit of mixing in spoken word. Miles Davis is the clearest reference point, both in the title For Miles and Miles and in the book he later wrote on him, and Gershwin supplied the 2002 tribute. The distinguishing feature is the intellectual frame. Pieces carry titles like "Suite Filosofica" and "Mysterium Trinitatis," whole albums are built on the texts of Emo and Invernizzi, and several come with a companion book. Philosophy is his main public profession and jazz is a long, serious parallel career rather than a hobby: ten albums on one label across twenty years. AllMusic files him under jazz, and the available coverage is mostly in Italian, so this profile leans on Italian Wikipedia, Discogs credits and the liner details they record.