demian

Clown and composer. I lived in the following cities in my life time: Salvador, São Paulo and Campinas (Brasil), Mineapolis (USA) and London (UK). I was born in Salvador, Bahia - Brazil.I did undergrad (B.A) in History at UNICAMP (Universidade Estadual de Campinas- Brazil), master (M.A) in Theatre at UFBA (Universidade Federal da Bahia) and currently I am doing a PHD at UFBA in Theatre studying contemporary clowning. Today I am living in London (UK) where until june 2008 will hold the position of an associate student at Queen Mary University of London.I have worked with theatre since 1992. I was part of the theatre group Meio Dia at UNICAMP directed by Joana Lopes since 1992 and latter co-founded the Palhaços para Sempre (Clowns for Ever) together with João Lima, João Porto Dias, Felícia de Castro and Flavia Marco Antônio in Salvador, 2000.My active relationship with music started when I was 14 at Holland Park School (London) when I was class mate of Roland Lyefook (Scratch Profeser) and Marcel Atteen. We would enjoy most of our spare time together doing hip-hop. We would be always listening, rapping and watching Roland scratch. At those times Scratch Profeser had already won UK adult level competitions.When I was 16 I went back to Brasil where I had another musical experience at my school in São Paulo, Equipe. There I performed with Chico Pinheiro, Cacá and João Carioca. Than I fell in love with theatre and kind of abandoned music until clowning around Europe in the summer of 2003 together with the clown Alexandre Luis Casali and the singer and composer Celo Costa. After this journey where we performed a show called Tataravó and I played the triangle, I fell in love with the accordian, instrument that Celo Costa played in the show. So as soon as I arrived in Brasil I found out my aunt had an accordian and it was abandoned, left with a cousin in São Paulo. I managed to get hold of the now over 30 years old accordian, reformed it and have been studying alone, with friends and when I can afford with professional accordionists. In Bahia from 2004 on my musical partners have been many: Celo Costa, Marcelo Nunes, Davi Caires, Gerri Cunha, Eudes Cunha, Leo Macedo, Saulo Gama and Rowney Scott. I arrived in the UK again in 2007 and found Scratch profeser through Omar Lyefooks site ont the internet- the great soul singer of UK. And if you are following this biography you will realize there was a gap of 20 years that separated my contact with Scratch. Well, ever since we found eachother again, september 2007, we have been in a serious musical colaboration composing, researching, listening and practicing music. We even started performing this month of may at Favela Chic, Darling Walls (Camden) and kiss Club (Holborn). These performances are one of the results of so much fun playing together.My other artistic field today is clowning. I have been clowning since 1999. This meens doing and conducting workshops, performing and watching performances and now I am having a chance to think with consistency about clowning with my PHD research project.So that..s me, someone into clowning and music. I guess that..s why I am always surrounded by clowns and musicians.