Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts presents cellist Joshua Roman on Friday November 18
Cellist Joshua Roman
Concert on Friday, November 18
to feature works by Debussy, Brahms, Piazzolla, Visconti
Middletown, Conn.— Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts presents cellist Joshua Roman as part of the Performing Arts Series on Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8pm in Crowell Concert Hall located at 50 Wyllys Avenue on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown.
At 27, Oklahoma City native Joshua Roman has covered a wide range of repertoire in his performances, from two seasons as the principal cellist for the Seattle Symphony to his collaboration with DJ Spooky (on iPad) to cover Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” for The Voice Project. Mr. Roman, accompanied on piano by Andrius Zlabys, will perform sonatas by Claude Debussy and Johannes Brahms (No. 2 in F Major), Astor Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango, as well as selections from Dan Visconti's Americana, which Mr. Roman premiered in 2010. Yo-Yo Ma has stated “to me, Joshua is one of the great exemplars of the ideal 21st-century musician.”
There will be a pre-concert talk at 7:15pm by Wesleyan Private Lessons Teacher Julie Ribchinsky.
This performance by Joshua Roman is presented Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts and Music Department.
Tickets for the performances are $22 for the general public; $18 for senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, and non-Wesleyan students; and $6 for Wesleyan students. Tickets are available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa, by phone at (860) 685-3355, or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located in the Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. Tickets may also be purchased at the door beginning one hour prior to the performance, subject to availability. The Center for the Arts accepts cash, checks written to “Wesleyan University”, and all major credit cards. Groups of ten or more may receive a discount – please call (860) 685-3355 for details. No refunds, cancellations, or exchanges.
About Joshua Roman
Cellist Joshua Roman has earned a national reputation for his absolute commitment to communicating the essence of the music at its most organic level. The San Francisco Chronicle hailed Mr. Roman as “a cellist of extraordinary technical and musical gifts” following his 2010 debut with the San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt. For hisongoing creative initiatives on behalf of classical music, Mr. Roman was named a 2011 TED Fellow, joining a select group of Next Generation innovators of unusual accomplishments with the potential to positively affect the world.
In the 2011-12 season Mr. Roman is guest artist for the Seattle Symphony’s opening night gala, which marks Ludovic Morlot’s first concert as Music Director. He makes his Toronto Symphony debut, performs at the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, and is presented in recital by San Francisco Performances and on the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago. He also plays concertos with orchestras in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina and Oregon.
Among the highlights of this past season, Mr. Roman performed duos with Yo-Yo Ma at a State Department event hosted by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden for the President of China, participated in the 2011 TED Conference in Long Beach and played at the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway. He made his debut as soloist and conductor with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and appeared with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Summer engagements included debuts at the Caramoor InternationalMusic Festival and La Jolla Summerfest.
Mr. Roman has appeared as soloist with the with the Seattle Symphony, where he gave the world premiere of David Stock’s Cello Concerto, as well as with the Albany and Santa Barbara Symphonies, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Ecuador, among many others. He performed Britten’s third Cello Suite during New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival in a pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall, and was the only guest artist invited to play an unaccompanied solo during the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s 2009 debut concert at Carnegie Hall.
In addition to his solo work, Mr. Roman is an active chamber music performer. He has enjoyed collaborations with veterans like Earl Carlyss, Christopher Taylor and Christian Zacharias, as well as with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the International Festival of Chamber Music in Lima, Peru. He often joins forces with other dynamic young soloists and performers from New York’s vibrant music scene, including artists from So Percussion, the JACK Quartet and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two.
In spring 2007, Mr. Roman was named Artistic Director of TownMusic in Seattle, where he creates programs that feature new works and reflect his eclectic musical influences and inspirations. TownMusic’s 2011-12 season offerings feature Mr. Roman in the complete Bach Cello Suites, performances by Brooklyn Rider and Alarm Will Sound, and a commission for composer Mason Bates.
Committed to making music accessible to a wider audience, Mr. Roman may be found anywhere from a club to a classroom, performing jazz, rock, chamber music, or a solo sonata by Bach or Kodály. His versatility as a performer and his ongoing exploration of new concertos, chamber music, and solo celloworks have spawned projects with composers such as Aaron Jay Kernis, Mason Bates, Derek Bermel, Gabriela Lena Frank and Dan Visconti. He has collaborated with photographer Chase Jarvis on Nikon video projects. One of Roman’s ongoing undertakings is an online video series called “The Popper Project”: wherever the cellist and his laptop find themselves, he performs an étude from DavidPopper’s “High School of Cello Playing” and uploads it, unedited, to his YouTube channel. Roman’s outreach endeavors have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers, and displacement camps, communicating a message of hope through music.
Mr. Roman began playing the cello at the age of three on a quarter-size instrument, and played his first public recital at age ten. Home-schooled until he was 16, Roman then pursued his musical studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Richard Aaron. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Cello Performance in 2004, and his Master’s in 2005, as a student of Desmond Hoebig, former principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Joshua Roman has been singled out as “Musical America’s New Artist of the Month.” He is grateful for the loan of an 1899 cello by Giulio Degani of Venice.
To watch Joshua Roman’s YouTube videos, please visit http://www.youtube.com/joshuaromancello
For more information, please visit http://www.joshuaroman.com/
About the Performing Arts Series
The Performing Arts Series at the Center for the Arts brings a wide array of world-class musicians, cutting-edge choreography, and groundbreaking theater performances and discussions to Wesleyan University. This season's performances include Bebe Miller Company: History(November 18 & 19, 2011), Lionel Loueke Trio (February 25, 2012), the Connecticut premiere of Chunky Move: Connected (March 30 & 31, 2012), and Fernando Otero Quartet (April 14, 2012). For more information, please visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.
Save 10% when you buy tickets to four or more Performing Arts Series events. Save 15% when you buy tickets to six or morePerforming Arts Series events. Call or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office at (860) 685-3355 to take advantage of these discounts.