Dean Baker

Dean was born in 1967 and grew up listening to the likes of David Bowie, The Beatles, The Police, Madness, Duran Duran and Howard Jones. His early years of sitting at his grandmother’s piano became a passion and in the early 80’s, when the synthesiser was making a huge impact on the music scene, Dean bought his first ever synth (a Korg Poly 800). Forming and joining local bands was the next step and as the ‘synth pop’ 80s scene started to wander away, he went back to learn the piano and Hammond organ – in particular, jazz. He  went through most of his early musical life completely oblivious to the fact that there was a scene called progressive rock and it wasn’t until he played in many bands in the local Bournemouth and Poole area that he became aware of a band named Galahad. They were making a name for themselves within the progressive rock scene and in 1996 they were looking for a new keyboard player. After a successful interview with the band they were straight into the studio and they worked on the album Following Ghosts.

Fast forward to May 2008 and Galahad were performing at the Tiana Festival in Barcelona, Spain. The headliners that night were a band that Dean hasn’t really heard much about – Twelfth Night. The guys all got on well and a night of partying with Andy Sears led to a great friendship being formed. Both Dean and Andy kept in touch from then onwards and a call from Andy at the end of 2009 asking Dean if he would be interested in playing keyboards for a forthcoming Twelfth Night tour was met with an eager “yes”. Dean has since featured in all the Twelfth Night / Cryptic Clues shows since 2010.