The young piano talent , Christian Carlino , aka DeLord . DeLord , was born in Modena on February 10, 1985. Since childhood he has shown interest in piano and keyboards; it is in fact at the age of 9 that he receives his first keyboard (Bontempi) as a gift.
In 2007 he began, as a professional musician, to bring his music around Italian theaters and clubs ; after only two years he publishes Sognare , DeLord’s first book with a free CD containing the first 5 tracks of the homonymous album.
MZ: How did you approach the art of music and when did you start playing the piano?
DeLord: I think I was born with music … imagine a path, the more I grew up the more I realized that I could not be detached from this world of keys and sounds, I was so curious that since I was a child, even though I didn’t know anything about music, like playing a piano, I started. I knew the notes, listened to the sound and remembered all the sounds I liked best by ear; until I started playing famous pieces without even knowing chords or notes, but just listening to them.
Let’s say that this was the period that I love to define “falling in love with music”, in fact at that time everything was new to me and represented a world where I could isolate myself, a world only mine, without rules, where I could best express my freedom and until the age of 16 it was like this: a simple game. There were those who spent the hours in front of the playstation, I spent them in front of the piano keyboard. I want to go back a little over the years and tell you two anecdotes.
My parents told me that when I was little, I think around 2/3 years, they went to see a concert by Toto Cutugno and at a certain point he took me in his arms during the concert, here, it makes me roll with laughter Right now; do you imagine? He who sings “I’m an Italianooooooooo, a real Italian!” and in the meantime there is me who do not understand what I do there and where I am!
Another nice anecdote that I love to remember is this: at the beginning of the 90s it was very fashionable to do castings to recruit children to act as testimonials for toys and my parents decided to take me to a casting that took place I believe in Pavullo, where I lived in childhood, here, I do my “audition” all super charged and happy and do you know why? Only because they had promised me that later I could choose a toy of my choice offered by the sponsor, and then I approach the majestic toy room full of stuff, among which the legendary NINTENDO that had just come out, and you know among all the what did I choose? A mini keyboard! It was two octaves, tiny, and made a sound that didn’t even remotely sound like a piano, but I was the happiest child in the world! So much so that both the organizers and my parents were amazed.
Here we say that I love to remember these two episodes as a sign perhaps, something that could already make me understand the direction I would have taken later and much more consciously.
MZ: Is there a contemporary pianist you refer to?
DeLord : Only one? I have several. Lately I learned of a pianist who composes music at 432hz, the divine frequency; his name is Giorgio Costantini . Let’s say that in my collection of pianists we can include: Ludovico Einaudi , some pieces by Giovanni Allevi , Philip Glass , Erik Satie , Keith Jarret , Stefano Bollani . So as you can guess I don’t have a real reference … let’s say that I love music, I love art in all its forms and I don’t think we should only fossilize on a pianist or a musical genre and so on … art is freedom, is exploration combined with curiosity.
MZ: How did your musical training take place? Did you go to specific schools? How has your style evolved over time?
DeLord : I had an unconventional background. In fact, I have never attended a conservatory, I do not have a musical diploma but I have always tried to study and approach music in a free and natural way; which has led me over time to develop a very delicate and intimate style. Let’s say my training could be accompanied in parallel with my personal life: I can divide it into three phases:
Adolescence / School: in this period I approached music without special studies. I owned a Bontempi keyboard and I began to understand on my own what it meant to explore the world of music and notes by interpreting everything by ear; hence the creation of my first cover band where we performed pieces by Vasco , Ligabue , Lunapop and Timoria . Do you think that at the time for me, using my left hand to accompany me was a challenge; I still have photos where I see absurd finger positions just to try and play a chord.
After a few years, helped by my summer jobs thanks to which I have always supported myself, I paid for the first piano lessons with my first teacher Marilena Scarpitti and later with Enrico Bernardi. In that period I approached various musical genres, I passed through Deep Purple , Led Zeppelin , U2 , Nomads , Guns’ n Roses , but in every band, the piano always tried to be the master and in fact I always like to remember that in all the bands of my adolescence I was “kicked out” because I didn’t do the identical songs to the original but I always wanted to improvise and put the piano everywhere. Post-work: after school, my work commitments did not lead me to abandon music; at the time I still did not know what it meant to share a passion with another person and I had myself totally canceled twice by two different people who almost forced me to stop playing, a serious mistake, which however led me right now to know the awareness of what I am and what I want to be. In that period I also understood what it meant to play for “fame” and not for the passion of music, in fact I joined a rock band as a keyboard player, I performed at the historic Alcatraz in Milan in front of 1000 people, some dates in Russia and in the most famous clubs in Italy, but there was something wrong, it was not my dream. It represented the wrong path and a project in which I did not believe and above all suitable only for marketing. I left and closed myself in a period of personal and inner reflection that lasted almost 2 years, but from which I was able to grasp the best aspects to continue my path and grow both personally and as a musician. Current: I continue as self-taught to tackle the study of the piano and I hope soon to be able to enroll at the Conservatory of Bologna to refine my research, because I want and must always remember that you never stop learning and knowing new things; and finally I can share my passion with a person who lives up to my expectations. My style is defined by some as “the one that plays with the wings”, but I assure you, many have tried to imitate the Delord style to no avail, and I don’t want to say it presumptuously, I just want to confirm what I have decided to write in the my new record, that is: “If I have to be a disciple of someone, I think I can say that I am exclusively of myself.” But I could tell you that I always try to touch the deepest strings of people’s hearts, here it is Delord style .
MZ: DeLord, why this stage name?
DeLord: I’m Christian Carlino, aka DeLord, written just like that; many have always asked me if I had spelled the name wrong or what, but in reality I decided to use this name because, when I was 16, I was part of a Deep-Purple cover band and from there everyone started to give me the title of “lord”, taken up by the keyboardist of Deep Purple (John Lord). Subsequently, a strange episode led me to use this name.
In 2007 I exhibited myself for the first time as a solo pianist and on the poster they wrote “DeLord”, mangling the English version of the term, from that day I decided to use that name, which also represents the two parts that are enclosed in me: the serious part and the craziest part. In fact, the lord represents seriousness and class, but the initial distortion “De” unites the other craziest part of my being. All this is part of the character, which reflects eclectic, easy-going, elegantly, wears shoes of different colors and sees nothing strange in it; from the stage my character usually gives roses as a gesture of romance, which is also part of the lord. In recent years, my discovery of faith and spirituality have allowed me to look at my stage name with an extra smile, as the translation from English becomes “The Lord”, ie Christ.
MZ: “Sognare” and “Sognare part II”, what do these two albums have in common? What does the dream represent for you?
DeLord : They have a lot in common. In the initial project this had to be a single disc and represent a well-defined path but by chance it took three years to complete the path and project. If I have to analyze the two works, I can say with certainty that what unites them most is the desire to give dreams and emotions to people with the heart; each piece represents something, an idea, a story, a social or contemporary problem, each of us can reflect ourselves. All this leads to the dream, the central theme of the two discs. The dream represents the hope and the desire to live, to make our life unique and special by gathering the best teachings from everything that happens to us, also and above all from negative experiences. At my concerts I love to communicate this concept and share with people my desire to never stop, even in a period like ours where we are going through such a profound crisis and I ask myself: “but maybe the time has not come to take back our dreams?”
MZ: What emotions do you intend to arouse in those who listen to your notes?
DeLord : Well, definitely my emotions. I get excited to excite myself. Through my notes I want to take you into my world, isolate you from the rest, make you feel better, make you reflect; especially during my performances, and whoever came to see me knows it, I love interacting with the public by telling the atmospheres that prompted me to write that song and anticipate what I want to tell with it in order to bring the listener directly into my world and my music.
MZ: Projects for the future.
DeLord: In the musical field we are organizing the first dates of the 2013 tour which will be divided between live dates in theaters, squares and clubs in which I will be accompanied by cello and visual arts; in short, we will see some good ones, not the usual classical piano concert, while in parallel I am starting to make contact with various Italian schools to carry on my project “Stories” through which I want to stimulate the comparison between students on very delicate issues.
I will continue to write and I already have a new record in the pipeline that will see the light in mid-2013 and I do not hide the possibility of making some unreleased songs with a POP style voice, so not only piano in Delord’s life and finally I have always cultivated the my great passion for writing and I’m working on some short stories, but this will be a whole other story …
Written by Michela Zanarella
Source: Oubliette Magazine
