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my consciousness and make me feel better. I think my parents might have thought I was autistic! Looking back on it, I was already playing new age music way before the genre existed!
I listened to my first live jazz performance at age nine and was absolutely captivated by the drummer. I think my heart did a triple twisting back flip watching him beat out those syncopated rhythms. I went home that night and told my parents I wanted to be a drummer and spent the next ten years playing percussion in a variety of venues. During the last fifteen years, I became entranced by indigenous wind instruments (aerophones), particularly Native American flutes, and later the Australian digeridoo. Making music with the breath has transformed me and my understanding of music. These instruments have provided a deep and profound path for my own healing and spiritual growth as well. Using the breath to make music has brought me to my favorite instrument of the moment – the human voice.
KP: Which musical instruments do you play?
DeMaria: Piano, a whole range of synthesizers and keyboards, a wide range of indigenous percussion (djembe, doumbek, frame drums, shakers, rattles, etc.) and a wide range of indigenous woodwind instruments, from the Native American flute to the Australian didgeridoo. I am now working on incorporating my voice into my work.
KP: How old were you when you started writing music?
DeMaria: From the moment I touched my first key on the piano, it was like finger painting with sound for me. (I often see color and feel energy moving when I play.) When I began taking lessons a few years later, I was always getting into trouble with my piano teachers because I would spend so much time making up my own music instead of practicing my lessons. I was chastised again and again with the words “you can’t compose music until you can read music.” To my mind, that was backwards because the most natural thing for me is to discover something new every time I sit down with any instrument.
KP: I get so upset when I hear about piano teachers discouraging creativity at the piano - and there are a lot of them!
DeMaria: I feel the same way Kathy. I composed a number of pieces for friends and family growing up, but I started becoming more serious about composing in college. During my internship and residency as a psychologist, I composed five original albums (well, actually tapes) of electronic music for my close friends. It was my escape and way of staying sane through that time. However, I mark my first mature composition as being in 2003 with the release of “The River.”
KP: Do you compose often?
DeMaria: My first love was music and my natural way of playing is improvising. I’m always improvising, and it’s out of these improvisations that my compositions arise. In some ways, I’m always exploring new phrasings, rhythms and musical ideas. Many compositions disappear, never to be played again, but I’ve been trying to get better at recording whatever I improvise – a technique David Darling taught me. By the way, I’m graduating this fall from his Music for People program. It’s a four year internship in musicianship and leadership focusing on the art of improvisation. His work has had a profound impact on me and has really supported my skills as a musician and composer. I told David after my first weekend workshop with him that I had been looking for a program like his since I was six years old!
KP: That sounds like a wonderful experience! Which of the other arts are you involved in?
DeMaria: Kathy, I have learned over the years that when I create I feel more whole, healthy and happy so I try to provide as many opportunities to create as I can. My favorites (outside of music, which is my main creative passion and outlet) are writing (poetry, plays, and prose), dancing, yoga and painting. I still hope to pursue film school - a dream of mine – and one day perhaps film one of my screenplays or plays.
KP: Who and what are important musical influences for you?
DeMaria: Great question, Kathy! I would say the most enduring musical influences are the sounds of nature. I grew up in a very rural part of Connecticut, surrounded by acres and acres of woodlands. The sounds of bird songs, babbling brooks, streams, the wind, rain, and crickets were my friends. I relished the symphony of sounds there, particularly when the crickets and frogs started their nightly songs. When we moved to a suburban setting in Florida in my mid-teens, I remember missing those sounds terribly. I still say I get some of my best material from the birds! I’ve carried on a love affair with an owl who loves to play call-and-response duets with me and a particularly low flute. Some of those duets ended up on the “Siyotanka” CD in the song, “Night Watcher.” The character of the owl
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