Pink Floyd and JJ Cale might not sound like the obvious providers of lullabies, but they were the first musical sounds that Demian Dorelli heard. Born in Hammersmith, London, baby Demian was laid to sleep in the back of a speaker while his dad’s favourite music played out the other side.

No surprise then that Demian (Demian with an ‘e’, incidentally, in reference to the novel by the German-Swiss writer Herman Hesse) has always had music in his soul. ‘I always feel like a musician, even when I’m not writing or performing music,’ he says, ‘and I’ve hung on to that.’ There have been times he’s needed that self-belief, especially when his career path has taken unexpected turns into yoga teaching, plumbing, working for Apple, and audio-video installations.

Now though, his focus is most certainly his music and a return to his first love, the piano. He’s been playing since a child when he climbed the exam ladder despite a reluctance to conform to the structure and discipline of standard piano lessons. For him, even then, playing the piano was more about expressing and capturing the emotions of the moment. He looks to Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert album, a virtuoso performance of improvised jazz piano, as the ultimate inspiration for that organic self-expression.

Pic by Joby Sessions
First introduced to jazz by his Italian father (a keen guitarist) – on a cinema trip in 1986 when the two of them saw the classic film, Round Midnight – it was a genre that immediately appealed. The film, which features the work of Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Pierre Michelot, Wayne Shorter, and Bobby McFerrin, amongst others, explores the Paris jazz scene of the 1950s. ‘It blew my mind,’ he says. ‘I loved the whole mood of it, of how the music was treated like an art form.’

Jazz recordings soon joined his ever-growing and eclectic sound library, taking their place alongside ska tracks from Madness and Bad Manners to Tchaikovsky and opera, (the latter two introduced to him by his mum, a dancer with the Royal Ballet School, and his experiences performing at the Royal Opera House and ENO).

Shortly afterwards, while he was studying music at the West London Institute, he met Italian musician, Alberto Fabris, who was to play a key role in his career. The two students initially bonded over their Italian heritage but soon found they also had very similar musical tastes. They eventually played alongside one another in bands, The Egypt and Blend. When Alberto was touring with the Italian singer-songwriter, Pacifico, in 2010, Demian joined the tour to play keyboards. Afterwards, though living in India at the time, he wrote and recorded piano for a track on Pacifico’s ‘Bastasse il Cielo’ album.

It was after returning from Bangalore in 2018 that Demian finally decided to take the plunge and do what he’d been wanting to do all his life – become a fulltime solo artist. ‘I’ve always known that music is the only thing that gives me everything I want, and when I got back from India, I realised that it was now or never. I didn’t want to have one of those deathbed moments where you look back on your life with regret.’

Since then, he’s been dedicating his time to writing and recording his own compositions, with the support of his record label, Ponderosa Music Records. Part of the pleasure has also been working with Alberto again. ‘He’s produced all my recordings,’ Demian says. ‘He has the perfect instincts to create organisation out of my raw ideas and music.’
Demian’s first album, ‘Pink Moon, A Journey On Piano’, came out in 2021. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio near Bath, and inspired by Nick Drake’s classic album, the eleven piano-only tracks reinterpret and pay homage to Drake, offering a musical dialogue between the past and the present. After several live shows in Italy and the UK, the album was recently performed live to sell-out audiences at Tall Trees and the Folk Club in Cambridge.

Three singles have already been released from Demian’s second album, My Window, with the full album out on 19th May. This time the inspiration is art, beginning with David Hockney’s 2009/2012 digital drawings of the changing seasons as seen through the window of his Yorkshire home. The concept has grown to explore other window paintings by artists such as Vermeer and Menzel. ‘I always wanted to put music into art,’ Demian says. ‘Music is emotional, not just conceptual, and looking at the paintings helped me find my own musical story.’ Recorded in a studio in Salento, Italy where the windows there opened onto sunlit olive groves, all the tracks are original compositions by Demian, and each track is accompanied by an original illustration, a collaboration with artist Franco Matticchio.

Demian is currently working on a new project for release in 2024, something that takes him back to a genre he loves but with a twist. ‘I want to do something slightly different to what’s happening now,’ he says. ‘That’s what I get excited about.’ Watch this space!