MY STORY — Il titolo del tuo sito

Hi! I’m TOtaiota, and i would like to tell you my story…

I was born in Italy, into a family where music was already a daily language. Both of my parents were pianists, and it felt natural for me to sit at the piano from the age of three. What was a path for them began for me almost as a game — or perhaps, as my mother likes to tell it with a smile, out of a small sense of envy toward my brother (oups…)

Curiosity has always been the driving force behind everything. I learned quickly, to the point that my parents soon decided to entrust me to other teachers, gradually moving from a familiar environment to more professional settings. At the age of ten, I also began studying the violin, while at the same time taking part in my first regional competitions in classical piano and chamber music, where I received several prizes.

Yet even then, something was already reaching beyond the academic path. Alongside my classical studies, I felt a constant need to explore: I would transcribe pieces I loved, searching for new sounds. I still remember the day I decided to transcribe The Blue Danube — my father was struck by how quickly I did it. That was one of the first moments I realized that, for me, music was not only about interpretation, but also about discovery.

Around the age of seven, something more personal had already begun to take shape. I would spend hours at the piano, inventing small melodies — simple, yet filled with images. Two of them have stayed with me ever since: in my mind, they tell the story of little goats and rabbits running and leaping through green fields, bathed in a quiet, suspended light. They never had words, yet they have always remained alive within me, like small secret worlds.

It was there that I discovered, almost without realizing it, the joy of creating — and a quiet but constant need to give shape to what I imagined.

Around the age of sixteen, I felt for the first time the need to give a concrete form to my creativity. I wrote my first piece for violin and piano, Breathing, which I released in 2018 under my own name. From that moment on, composition became an essential part of my path: I continued to write, arrange and release music, without imagining that this process would eventually lead me to my first album.

In 2023, I released Postcards, my first record — an autobiographical collection told through music. Each piece is dedicated to people, experiences and emotions that shaped me in the years leading up to its release. It was born from the need to gather fragments of life and give them meaning through sound.

I grew up surrounded by different musical worlds: Bach and Mozart, but also the Beatles, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. My father, through his experience performing on cruise ships, passed on to me a love for jazz and show music; my mother introduced me to more modern sounds. This diversity shaped the way I listen, think and create music.

At fourteen, I entered the Conservatory in Frosinone, where I spent seven years studying and growing as a pianist. An Erasmus experience in French-speaking Switzerland later changed everything, leading me to stay.

It was not an easy transition: the following years were marked by difficult choices and a strong burnout. But it was precisely through that period that I found a more authentic direction, which eventually brought me to the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne, where I now study Pop Keyboards.

At the same time, I have always played in bands. As a teenager, I was part of From Dust, a small group in my hometown of Alvito, where music and dance came together in local performances.

After that first experience, there was a long pause until 2022, when I joined Velvet Ink in Lausanne as a keyboard player. With them, I performed at events such as Festival Objectif Terre and SatRocks at EPFL. After less than a year, I chose to leave the project, feeling the need to follow a more personal and coherent direction.

In February 2025, I formed my own group, with the aim of arranging and producing my compositions together with musicians from the local scene, many of them fellow students in Lausanne. We have now completed an album, currently in the mixing phase, with a release planned for 2026.

My music is born from a deeply personal need: to communicate emotions that are often difficult to express in words. My lyrics are clear, yet deeply introspective; they do not seek approval, but understanding. Each song is connected to a specific experience or person who has left a mark on my life — it is, in many ways, a dialogue with myself, an attempt to make sense of what I live through.

I write pop songs shaped by jazz and funk influences, with traces of my classical background. But above all, my music is a space where I can observe, transform and tell reality — often in ways I could not explain otherwise.

In recent years, I also felt the need to redefine my artistic identity. This led to the birth of Totaiota, my new stage name. Surprisingly, this name has been with me for much longer than I realized: it comes from a childhood drawing I rediscovered only recently. During long summer journeys to Greece with my family, I would spend hours looking out of the car window, playing with the letters of the logo in front of me, creating anagrams and new combinations. Once we reached our destination, that game would turn into drawing.

Rediscovering that image today, and recognizing it as part of myself, felt deeply symbolic. In “Totaiota” I find what defines me: attention to detail, curiosity, versatility, creativity, and above all, the ability to transform simple elements into something greater.

And it is from here that I continue to tell my story… the best is yet to come!