Paul Bass Photo
Joshua Roman performs in the WNHH FM studio.
Cindy told a story about having life as you know it taken from you, about wrestling with how to adjust to a new life, then accepting and moving on.
The story had no words.
Actually, Joshua Roman told the story through Cindy’s centuries-old wooden frame during an appearance Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” program.
Cindy is a cello. A rare cello, one of a believed six of its kind, built in 1830 by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda. The Stradivari Society leant it to Roman to perform with in concert halls around the world.
Roman — who named the cello Cindy — squeezed the instrument into the WNHH studio for a tiniest-of-all-tiny-desks performance of pieces from Immunity, a newly released album of music that accompanied his recovery from a debilitating bout of Covid and a continuing struggle with long Covid. (Click here to read a New York Times story detailing that process.) Roman was in town for a two-night appearance at Yale’s Schwarzman Center as part of a tour promoting the album and featuring discussions with experts about chronic disease.
One of the pieces is composer Allison Loggins-Hull’s “Stolen.” Loggins-Hull gave Roman permission to record and perform the instrumental piece, which is about the lost childhood of a girl sold into slavery as a child bride. On “Acoustic Thursday,” Roman bowed the first part, which corresponds to the morning when the girl is suddenly taken away and her life changes. He put the bow aside for the second part, strumming and attacking the instrument in a frenzy. He later said the point was to reflect the “frenetic anxious energy of trying to adjust to a new life. All of a sudden, everything’s different, and you don’t have a choice. You have to become an adult.” He retrieved the bow for the third and final part, the stage of “resignation, acceptance of, ‘this is life now.’ ”
Roman, who’s now 41, went through a similar process of reeling from having his capabilities snatched from him by Covid, then struggling to figure out a new path, slowly regaining his ability to practice and perform.
And he had changed in the process.
Before long Covid, he was on a traditional virtuoso’s path. He was performing by the age of 10, the youngest Seattle Symphony principal cellist by the age of 22, then a soloist with a succession of other orchestras. He’d collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma. He envisioned moving to France while pursuing a conventional route to classical music success.
As with others struck by Covid and chronic illness, Roman reassessed all that. He decided to embrace his more genuine “rebel” self, pursuing projects and collaborations that draw from an eclectic range of genres that more accurately reflect his tastes and identity. Hence the Immunity project.
A conversation with a friend strengthened his resolve to pursue that project, that new direction.
“I don’t think I can to do that,” he remembered saying, and thinking. “I still have to get approval from the mainstream.”
“Joshua, is Yo-Yo Ma’s approval not good enough?” his friend responded.
He realized he’d fallen into an “evangelical” trap of “converting people to approval,” at which point “they no longer count.” That sends you on a never-ending quest to find new approval, which will never be good enough.
The smarter route: Be true to yourself. Find the acceptance from within.
In addition to “Stolen,” Roman performed the prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 1 as well as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during his WNHH visit, segueing through a series of divergent moods on the latter. You can watch him perform and discuss his journey on “Acoustic Thursday” in the video below.
Previous “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” performances:
• Ceschi
• Wally
• Israel Corona-Galan, Brendan Castro & Matthew Munzner
• Brandt Taylor & Chris DePino
• New Haven Kapelye
• Shellye Valauskas and Dean Falcone
• Brian Ember
• Sketch Tha Cataclysm
• MJ Bones
• Johnathan Moore
• Charlie Widmer
• Sam Carlson
• Steve Mednick
• Frank Critelli