Daniela Pes is a Sardinian musician and singer-songwriter, born in the heart of Gallura in 1992.
In 2023, she won the Tenco Award for Best Debut Work, the Rockol Award for Best Emerging Artist of 2023, the Navicella Award, and in 2024, the Ballerino Dalla Award and the Maria Carta Award with her debut album Spira, released on April 14, 2023 by Tanca Records. Her voice and music defy categorization and predetermined labels. Daniela Pes is immersed in the flow of music as a singer, instrumentalist, and electronic musician.
Her talent is multifaceted, and her debut comes with an impressive background, including a degree in Jazz Singing from the Sassari Conservatory and a scholarship to the Nuoro Jazz Summer Seminars directed by Paolo Fresu, which led to performances at Time in Jazz and the Harp Festival in Rio de Janeiro. Further accolades include the prestigious Andrea Parodi Award in 2017 (where she won the Critics’ Award, International Jury Award, Best Music, and Best Arrangement) and the Best Music and Nuovoimaie Awards at Musicultura in 2018.
Daniela Pes performs on Monday, 2.12.2024 at silent green Berlin.
FACTS
1. STUDIO IS COOL, TOURING IS GREAT
2. A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE ROCKS
3. I LOVE GETTING LOST WITH ABLETON LIVE
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Everything in life, I’m constantly creating melodies in my head and dreaming sounds.
I believe there’s no perfect formula for creating something beautiful; but a lucky combination of factors must necessarily occur. The two most essential elements are how you feel in that moment and what surrounds you. When it’s possible, one of my favorite ways to find inspiration is by observing people’s faces and watching the sea.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I have been singing since I was a child. My father is a musician, and I have always had many instruments at home to explore and play. I have always sung and composed; my first recording dates back to when I was four years old, where I sang ‘Se ti tagliassero a pezzetti’ by De André. I grew up listening to a lot of Italian singer-songwriters like De André, Lucio Battisti, Lucio Dalla, Fossati, and De Gregori, as well as a great deal of international music, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Dire Straits. After high school, I studied jazz singing, and listening to jazz remains fundamental for me even today. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker are the figures who have taught me the most about expressing myself in music in the truest and freest way possible.
After the conservatory, I entered a period of more mature and urgent listening that led me to a visceral love for Arabic instrumental music, as well as music from Western Asia and artists like Tigran Hamasyan, Avishai Cohen (the double bassist player), and Dhafer Youssef.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Kind Of Blue – Miles Davis
The Shadow Theatre – Tigran Hamasyan
Blue – Joni Mitchell
Abbey Road – Beatles
Die – Iosonouncane
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
My first and only tattoo :)
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
I would love to get to know Berlin much better, but from the places I have seen so far, I still remember a particular energy in the Neukölln area.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I have no idea.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Saya Gray- Qwerty II
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
That’s a secret.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
As a performer my last concert in Italy with the Trio-set, the 12th oh October in Bologna / Robot Festival.
It’s hard to say which concert was the best as an audience member, but one that definitely left a mark on me recently was The Smile’s concert at the Cavea of the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Technological advances are amazing when they help us become more independent as composers, arrangers, and producers of our own work.
11. Please tell us about the development of your last album Spira?
I went through a long period of research and writing on my own, followed by another lengthy period of arranging with my producer (Iosonouncane). After that, after three years of work, we recorded the album in just one week at the Vacuum Studio in Bologna. It was the most important process of human and musical exploration of my life, my first work, and finally the first time I was able to express what I felt inside in the most genuine and accurate way possible.
After many years of studying and singing jazz, and a year and a half spent setting to music ancient Gallurese poetry (my dialect from northern Sardinia) by an 18th-century poet from my hometown, Don Gavino Pes, I undertook a major effort in musical and textual synthesis. Working with the language of the poems taught me how to use phonemes as pure sound, allowing me to feel completely free in my musical composition. To me, music and lyrics are one and the same—they are sound, and the voice is an instrument.
While writing this album, I never felt the desire to tell a specific story. I wanted to escape, to venture into distant lands, and to discover myself. I clearly remember where I was and what emotional state I was in during each musical moment I wrote. Each track is a translation into music of what I felt and experienced during those years, something that words cannot fully capture and performing live gives me the chance to expand the essence of the songs even more and to have fun changing them based on what I feel in the moment, giving space to improvisation.
