Sala cuts a fine line between songwriter and performer, with a talent for turning an ordinary moment into a party. Through music he finds expression for feelings and experiences ranging from the most explosive celebrations to the most intense of solitude. He breathes off sharing with his listeners all that which moves him.

Something of a nomad, Sala has travelled all his life. Aged 26, he has spent most of his life moving back and forth between New York, London and Madrid, where he started to play the piano, aged just four.

It must have something to do with the multiple cultures Sala has been exposed to since birth, that there isn’t a genre that he hasn’t at least experimented with. Essentially he focuses on writing songs on piano, though he has also played jazz, funk, rock, ska – a multitude of genres that enable him to escape all definition. A classically trained pianist, he also plays guitar and bass, sings, writes, and arranges his own music.

But Sala is more than just a fusion of the styles he plays. He is original. “You need to be a little bit crazy and unorthodox,” Sala says with a cheeky smile. “Think outside the box. That’s where it all is.”

Part of his ability to express himself musically comes from the fact that the piano has become his lifelong companion. “I can’t remember not playing the piano… It’s weird, it’s like it’s always been there,” he says. Amid all the change, too, which he underwent as a child, music was the one thing that was always there. Sala grew up in a musical environment; his three younger brothers are all musicians in their own right too. He has always had an astonishing musical ear, figuring songs out from very early on. His first, he recalls, was John Lennon’s Imagine, a song he taught himself to play aged 12. It’s fitting, too, that he should have gone in that direction so early, given he’s something of a bohemian in the depths of his soul.

Quiet on the inside, loud on the outside, Sala faces the world as a musician with all its consequences. “I like playing in a team, but when I want to write, I need to be alone,” he says. “It’s kind of scary sometimes, feels a little uncertain.” But he gets his inspiration from the street. “It can be anything. I was out with friends the other night, when I heard a girl saying she was ‘drunk as a skunk.’ I loved the phrase – made a whole song out of it,” he laughed.

As a performer, for Sala it’s all about giving everything he has. With no stage fright to plague him, he is playful, improvisational and in love with the show. For him music is all about making that raw connection between the performer and the audience – to reach out, ultimately, to every single listener. “That connection is what art is for me. Even in the height of the party, there needs to be that. For me, it’s about moving people. In every way I can.”

It may be because of this passion that he has tirelessly moved from style to style. For two years he played with a jazz band during his teenage years in the US; he wrote songs for his high school musicals aged 16, covering every instrument; he even played the organ each Sunday for Latino mass in Washington.

But now, he’s working on developing, to his fullest capacity, the sound he masters best, and one whose universal appeal is undoubted. “I’m working on my own pop-rock piano sound,” he says.

And as he works, he lives on in his endless string of party after party, all imbued with music. Sometimes it seems the night never ends in Sala's world. Drawing energy from listeners, he plays for hours. “For me, to connect on a really wide scale is an amazing privilege. I mean, it is such a great feeling, to know you’ve done a little something to make someone’s day a little better,” he says. “I’ll break any convention if that helps me generate smiles.”

- Serene Assir