Profile: Cellist Joshua Roman
Former Seattle Symphony cellist moves into a new role as soloist
From almost the day he arrived in town in 2006 to become principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Roman made a splash. Local media and musicians alike fawned over the then-22-year-old musician. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper called him “a musician of imagination and expressive breadth.” Local radio station KUOW-FM dubbed him a “classical rock star” on its website. “The minute Joshua came to Seattle, the musical world was aware of his presence,” says Christophe Chagnard, conductor of the Northwest Sinfonietta in nearby Tacoma. “He made his mark instantly. In a few months, he had a fan club.”
But rather than put down roots in a city enamored with him, after only two seasons Roman pulled the plug on a job that hundreds if not thousands of cellists would covet, announcing last spring that he’d be leaving to pursue a solo career. While a few other cellists, such as Lynn Harrell and Janos Starker, have left secure principal positions and gone on to successful solo careers, Roman’s move surprised plenty of observers, including former teacher Desmond Hoebig of the Cleveland Institute of Music. “I was nervous about him leaving Seattle so early,” Hoebig says. “I wanted him to be there longer, get financial stability. But Josh decided, and Josh is confident.”
Indeed, that level of decisiveness reflects this young cellist’s willingness to take risks in his career, projects, and repertoire. “I’m a big believer in doing what you want to do, when you can, and if you can,” says Roman, who’s now 24. “You can take a job and build your life around it, or you can build a life and take a job that matches that. I want to arrange myself around a solo career. It wasn’t a question of ‘if,’ it was a question of ‘how’ and ‘when.’”
So far, Roman has started to pull together a few of the pieces of a solo career. In September, he released his first recording, Ballad, a collection of works ranging from an arrangement of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise to Chopin’s Polonaise Brillante. He launched the recording, distributed at press time only in Japan by Bertelsmann Music Group, with recitals in Tokyo and Osaka. Last summer at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, he performed Britten’s Third Cello Suite in a pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall. And in June, management firm Opus 3 Artists, which represents big-time performers from Daniel Barenboim to Midori, added him to its roster.
Roman’s engagements in 2009 have included performances of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil with the Northwest Sinfonietta and the premiere of David Stock’s Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony.
Behind the growing list of professional credentials is a personable individual who’s unthreateningly ordinary and friendly, traits that boost his appeal, especially among young audiences. Roman’s life as of last fall, like that of many 20-somethings, was a jumble of taking cross-country car trips, crashing with friends, house-hunting in New York, and vacationing in the wilderness (he didn’t bring even the cello on that trip).
True to his generation, Roman adores British rock group Radiohead and freely acknowledges his love of other genres and performers, from the Beatles to Nine Inch Nails. Roman speaks with a youthful candor and earnestness, recalling appreciatively, for instance, that during his performance of the Britten at Mostly Mozart “the audience was super-quiet. There’s usually a lot more fidgeting going on during such a modern piece.”
Roman’s background, though, is highly unconventional. An Oklahoma native, he began formal music study at age three, not with a cellist but a violinist, who, Roman says, was the only teacher his parents could find in their area willing to take a student of his age. When his father, a choir director, took a job in Senatobia, Mississippi, Roman, then 13, commuted an hour north to Memphis to study with Peter Spurbeck, then the principal cellist of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Homeschooled, Roman recalls he and his three siblings had plenty of time to roam free once they’d finished their homework and music practice by early afternoon when other kids were still in school.
He attended the Cleveland Institute, studying first under Richard Aaron and then with Hoebig for his master’s degree, which he received in 2005. He hit the audition circuit, trying out for orchestra jobs in Cleveland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, where he settled in quickly with the orchestra.
Both he and the group appear to appreciate each other. “We all loved him very much” as both a player and a person, says Gennady Filimonov, a member of the Seattle Symphony violin section. A recent issue of a newsletter published by members of the orchestra called Roman’s tenure “stellar.” And Roman says that performing with the Seattle Symphony “was an amazing experience, with the sheer amount of music I played and what I learned.”
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