Demian Dorelli interprets the music of Nick Drake - and some of his own compositions

Three artists converged for a bewilderingly layered evening of memorable music and quirky anecdote at the The Golden Hind Cambridge Folk Club, to extol the work of Nick Drake, the dreamy driven Cambridge composer who sought fame alongside the stellar names of the early 70s – but who died from an overdose at the tragically young age of 26. A complex fascinating and intermittently fashionable figure, whose destiny remains mysterious, his work is once again under appreciative scrutiny. Demian Dorelli pianist and singer Emily Simpson are the latest interpreters of Nick Drake’s music - Trevor Dann is the author of his first biography – out now. All shared a stage to bring us the artist they know - but never met.

Demian Dorelli and Emily Simmons gave us Drake’s ethereal music by moving methodically through Pink Moon. his best known album. Dorelli plays piano with sublime style - a combination of Keith Jarrett with shades of Eric Satie .The effect was both sad and soothing, a contemplative homage to the Cambridge musician who despite his profound talent, failed to make the cut in the heady music scene. As rendered by the mysterious soulful voice of Emily Simmons, the songs sound almost other-worldly, “I have never heard a voice like it!” exclaimed the host of the evening (and he must have listened to quite a few). With her beautiful guitar work and gentle low voice, Emily is surely the perfect partner to the razor-sharp gifts of pianist Demian Dorelli as he sonically re-interprets works left for too long. Emily is in touch with the ethereal sound, she evokes a spirit of a softer past, we like to think, that was the hippie era of the 60s. Without her woolly hat, Emily would be a dead ringer for Joni Mitchell, face, bearing , manner and all – her vocal range seems parallel to the darling of the West coast who dominated the music scene for a decade.

To slice through the misty musicality of these two spiritually atuned performers came the earthier voice of Trevor Dann. With a breathlessly successful career in the media in the bag, Trevor has re-visited his Cambridge student days to provide the background of the heartbreakingly doomed story of Nick Drake. His reading from Darker than the Deepest Sea, was in sharply etched contrast to the musical dream sequences. Suddenly we were back in 1968 when a hopeful Trevor arrived in Cambridge only to find he was not in the romantic cloisters of the medieval university core, but out on the Huntingdon Road in the brutalist building by award-winning architect Denys Lasdun – described by Trevor as a cross between an Ikea outlet and a filling station. His disillusion deepened when he found his Nottingham confrères sequestered in the dreamy environs of King’s and Trinity Colleges and settled in suites of rooms once graced by Lord Byron, whilst he toughed it out with the hubub of cross Britain lorries as they tried to squeeze their way to the East coast ports. “It was like winning a raffle for rooms in the Savoy and finding you were in a Premier Inn on the motorway”. Darker than the Deepest Sea, is clearly destined to be a rival to Clive James’ (The Cambridge Critique Man of the Year if loyal readers remember – he said he was honoured to be honoured.)

The untimely death of Nick Drake was no one’s fault. That much emerged from the brief readings we heard from Trevor Dann. But his book, steeped as it is in the world of late 60s Cambridge, is clearly an amusing but heartfelt homage to this lost lad. I cannot wait to get my mitts on it.

Photographs of Drake are rare, but all share the same pastoral feel. Whether offering a flower to the camera in a stripy floor-length poncho or reclining amongst the long grass in flares, Drake was most at home in nature. A quintessentially English figure, he was educated between Marlborough College and Cambridge University. Standing six foot three inches tall, with dark, foppish hair and pretty, pre-Raphaelite features, he was most often outfitted in weather-worn denim, loose-fitting shirts, and that cornerstone of the bohemian—the black velvet blazer’.- wrote Vogue when it featured his music for their 2016 runway show.

Now his legacy is in the hands of Demian Dorelli– and the fabulously cheek-boned Emily Simmons. It is hard to think of two more sincere talented and worthwhile musicians and performers to carry the flame of this artist’s work into a new generation accompanied by Drake’s upbeat Boswell, the delightful Mr. Dann.

Pink Moon is Demian Dorelli’s latest album, find it on Spotify.

Darker than the Deepest Sea, The Search for Nick Drake by Trevor Dann, .

Da Capo, $16.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-306-81520-1