Joshua Roman will join the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera on Thursday, Nov. 17, playing Elgar's contemplative Cello Concerto.If you go
* What: Chattanooga Symphony & Opera perform’s Tchaikovshy Symphony No. 5 and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with special guest cellist Joshua Roman.* When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17.* Where: Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St.* Admission: $21-$83.* Phone: 423-267-8583.* Website: www.chattanoogasymphony.org.
Cellist Joshua Roman has been hailed as a young new face of classical music for more than a decade. At 22, he became the principal cellist for the Seattle Symphony and later was artistic director of TownMusic and artistic adviser for Seattle's Second Inversion.
Now at the ripe old age of 32, he wonders if the word "young" should be removed from his marketing material.
"Yeah, my manager said maybe we should take 'young' off the resume the other day," he says with a laugh. "Part of me was like 'Noooo.'"
While Roman, who will perform Elgar's Cello Concerto with the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera on Thursday, Nov. 17, is aware of how he is presented in the classical world, it's not something he thinks much about, nor does being the "hot new face" put added pressure on him, he says.
"I'm still not completely comfortable with the whole branding and marketing part of a career, and it is important. I know that people say that, but I don't feel much pressure. The most pressure I feel is to not get bored with what I'm doing. I want to continue to be challenged."
Which is one of the reasons he joined DJ Spooky in doing a cover of Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" in 2010 as part of The Voice Project. He was named a 2011 TED Fellow and curated a concert last year for a TED summit for which he did some arranging, performing and song selection. Among the pieces he picked were Prince's "Purple Rain" and "Let's Go Crazy."
"It kind of let people let their hair down," he says of the Prince hits.
Roman was born in Oklahoma City and has lived in Mississippi, Seattle, California and now New York City. In fact, when we talked, he was moving into a new apartment.
"It's cello friendly," he laughs. "That's kind of important."
Roman started playing cello at 3 and by 6 announced to his cello-playing father and violin-playing mother that the cello would be his vocation. He calls the Elgar piece, one of two in the next CSO Masterworks concert, one of the most tragic of the cello concertos.
"It's one of those staples, and I look forward to playing it again. I'm also excited to be coming to Tennessee. I lived in northern Mississippi near Memphis for awhile, so it will be fun to come down there to perform."
According to CSO program notes, Elgar's Cello Concerto was the composer's last notable work, composed in the aftermath of World War I. A critic at the time called it "very simple but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity."
The other selection of the evening is Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. The composer is said to have had a love/hate relationship with the work, at times taking pride in it and at other times repelled by it.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.
Critics’ takes on Joshua Roman
“If all musicians were as affable as cellist Joshua Roman, there’d be no chatter about classical music and how it is in jeopardy or doomed to die a slow death in cavernous concert halls.”— San Francisco Classical Voice (Lou Fancher)“Roman sang his own gorgeous and nostalgic melodies with warm, expressive sound, a partner to the orchestra. … In the final movement, the solo cello has set the orchestra free in a sort of concerto for orchestra full of dissonant harmonies percolating in shifting rhythms, swelling with the strings into a gorgeous flowering of melody and harmony redolent of the silver screen. Roman entered with glittering jazz- and rock-inspired passagework, and together the musicians pressed to the end, a classical concert soloist at ease in the midst of an orchestra with a rock drum beat and greeting a standing ovation at the very end.”— Columbus Dispatch (Jennifer Hambrick)“The work’s dedicatee proved to be a real champion of this contemporary piece, one that is destined to become a repertory staple. … Roman’s persuasive playing ably captured the finale’s jaunty nature, a lilting quality that was infectious. … His encore … further cemented Roman’s reputation as one of classical music’s most intriguing stars.”— The Oklahoman (Rick Rogers)“[Joshua Roman’s cello concerto] Awakening is a substantial and compelling work. Skillfully varied with an attractive vein of lyricism, the composer maintains interest throughout the concerto’s contrasted sections.”— Chicago Classical Review [Lawrence A. Johnson]“The centuries-old tradition of the composer-performer has pretty much fallen by the wayside in our increasingly specialized classical music era, when the creators and re-creators of music do their thing more or less independently, typically coming together only when it serves their purposes. The burgeoning dual career of Joshua Roman triumphantly defies that trend.”— Chicago Tribune (John von Rhein)“Having established himself as a 2011 TED Fellow and a performer with a passionate interest in bringing new works to concert audiences, cellist Joshua Roman has gotten beyond the ‘rising artist’ stage. His star has definitely risen.”— Examiner.com (Stephen Smoliar)