Daniel Bernard Roumain [Enlarge in New Window]

Daniel Roumain: I, Composer

There's something dubious about anyone being described as "a combination of Mozart, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Prince," but that's just what one critic called composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. And it makes perfect sense.

Like many performers, Roumain took to music at a young age. However, unlike most classical music prodigies or budding rock stars, Roumain had actually performed with a dizzying constellation of musical luminaries by his teens. They ran the gamut from Two Live Crew to Dizzy Gillespie to Ray Charles. Such is the breeding ground for this young composer who has the training and insight to say, "One can compare four intricate notes in Beethoven to the rapper Snoop Doggy Dog." And it is just this kind of adventurous and experimental thinking that places Roumain at the nexus of hip hop and classical music. I, Composer, Roumain's latest work, promises to deliver a good taste of his musical mixtures, dubbed "New Classical Soul."

I, Composer is a solo show for electric/acoustic violin conceived, composed, and performed by Roumain. Using the recorded sounds of a string quartet, percussion, drum loops, synthesizer vocals, and sampled conversations and ambient sound, Roumain's composition is a singular musical idea. In live performance, Roumain riffs off of the recorded material, played back through an Apple G4 computer. Though in many ways, I, Composer might sound as if it were the kind of swan song staged by a composer at the end of his career--from self-referential title to evening-length solo performance--this 31-year-old composer is just getting started. As Roumain's second solo show, the performance is much more than a portrait of a young artist at work. It's a perfect splicing of genres. I, Composer employs hip hop, rock, jazz, the blues, and classical music. In addition, it incorporates text, recorded conversations, and the ambient sounds of Harlem to "depict and convey aspects of the African American experience and the implications 'black life' has had, is having, and may have in the future of America and simultaneously, within the larger human experience," Roumain says. "It is a reflection of my life as an African American composer, living, working, composing, and teaching in Harlem."

Paul Griffiths, writing in The New York Times, says that Roumain's work "belongs very much in the American urban present." His music, the critic continues, has "a keen sense of how to create abstract shapes crossing cultural boundaries. . . . Within an ostinato-driven texture, he shows an extraordinary ability to keep interest alive in every instrumental part, combining visceral excitement with a dancing intelligence."

Performing constantly since high school, Roumain received a Bachelor of Music at Vanderbilt University and completed doctoral work at the University of Michigan in 2000. A 2002 Van Lier Fellow, artist-in-residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and chair of music theory at Harlem School of the Arts, Roumain has recently been named assistant composer-in-residence at the Orchestra of St. Lukes, in addition to being the musical director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

Born in Florida to Haitian parents, Roumain recalled his past in an early work, Haitian Essay, which was dedicated to his family. But he also has thoroughly embraced his current neighborhood of Harlem. The uptown Manhattan area, a symbol of African American artistic heritage, has played a vital role in both of his solo feature-length pieces. I, Composer, like Never Felt Better before it, is an homage to Harlem, says the composer, "and to the voices of those in my Harlem community."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Performance > Music | African American Themes | Americana | New York | 2002