In musical circles, they joke that Ivan Dorn foresaw a pandemic. At the end of last year, he announced that he was going on sabbatical. The decision to take a rest was quite reasonable, considering that during the last three years, Dorn and the group managed to live in Los Angeles and release an English-language OTD album, travel to Uganda and shoot a documentary there, and open their own music publishing house Masterskaya.

Dorn’s main lockdown achievement is that he learned to play the bass guitar. Now he promises to close himself soon with Dornobanda in a house in the Carpathians, where he will jam, writing a new album. The bass guitar helped the musician understand what the new material will be like — “funky.”

For Dorn, who used to be able to give 15 concerts a month from Riga to New York, quarantine was also an opportunity to be a father and a husband. He studies French with his six-year-old daughter Vasya and four-year-old son Vanya Dorn.

From an early age, Ivan teaches children to sports. Few people know that Dorn and his family are avid sailors. He rarely talks about it in interviews, but all the neighbors in the cottage community on the shores of the Kyiv Sea know that on weekends the Dorns “go out to sea.”

Ivan is a human energizer. Sitting still is not about him: in the village, he continually encourages neighbors to play friendly basketball matches, and in quarantine he arranged a CCTR strike match among Ukrainian artists. A year ago, by the way, the restless Dorn and his brothers conquered Elbrus.

Hiking and yachting, traveling and playing the bass guitar are all a way for the emotional artist to experience the world. He calls himself an empath and says that he feeds on those around him and knows his audience by sight. He knows some fans by name, recognizes them at his concerts. He communicates with some in person. Therefore, he does not really understand online gigs and has never played a single one during quarantine, despite many suggestions.

Nevertheless, his music publishing house had to start working online. In the quarantine, the team managed to release a series of videos “Behind the Scene” about the life of musicians and organize educational projects.

The musician says, “Probably, in my previous life I did something good, since there are such cool people around me now. So, in this one we need to do even more good — in order to go on a yacht in the next life and do nothing.”