Greg Stepanich

Roumain disc explores genre game

Daniel Bernard Roumain is a Broward County native (Margate, Dillard High) who has made a name for himself already as a New York-based violinist and composer with his genre-fusing music. (Here's an NPR piece about his work.)

Courtesy of his publicist, I’ve got an advance copy of his new album, etudes4violin&electronix, due out June 15. The music is indicative of the kind of thing I’ve been hearing more of as I browse the Web, in that it is polystylistic — part classical, part electronica, part house — and that it speaks through all these genres with equal confidence.

I’ve listened to this disc a couple times now, and I’ll write a print review about it when I’ve listened a couple more times, but for now I’ll say that Roumain is clearly a talented violinist, with an intense but loose, warm sound at his best that I find very attractive, and that reminds me of Papa John Creach, of all people.

Of the nine tracks, so far the most musically substantive for me are the two selections Roumain plays with the Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto — The Need to Be and The Need to Follow — both of which sound deeply sad and forlorn, but that also have moments of sheer loveliness. The Need to Be, at 10 minutes, is too long; there’s a better, shorter piece in there, and The Need to Follow is a little too hermetically sealed inside a small melodic and harmonic compass, but they’re both interesting pieces at first and second ear-blush.

Roumain also does pay tribute to the idea of the etude by setting himself some difficult technical hurdles (such as in the moody Divergence) and making sure they dazzle appropriately. I like his eclecticism and seriousness of purpose in making a musical statement with today’s material; I’ll know better after a few more listens how successful I think it is.

The thing that occurs to me as I listen, and the reason I wanted to mention this album before I’m ready to write a full review, is that a lot of new classical music I’ve heard seems to be less about a composer malking a statement than it is about a composer taking an auditory sample of his time. In other words, while we could expect composers of an earlier era to make something highly personal out of the music that was around them in their time, perhaps we are living in a time that engenders more anonymity.

It could be that all the technological resources at our disposal are simply moving composers into coming up with things that are mood-making and clever, but perhaps not very distinctive. How are you supposed to make your own personality felt through all the wealth of sounds an average person can hear at any time? Almost anything that’s been recorded before can be instantly found, and even the sounds available on a cheap electric keyboard can offer far more possibilities than a composer can get to in a reasonable time if he or she is trying to fill an assignment.

I still think composers need to create something original to be worthy of the highest respect, but there’s a great deal of sonic wallpaper out there that is often quite pleasant to listen to. It might be that the world’s standards have changed and no one needs a composer to make much of a statement anymore. It might be that all he or she needs to do is create something listenable that will set the appropriate background; perhaps this is where the dominance of our visual popular culture has come to.

I don’t know where Daniel Bernard Roumain’s new disc fits into all this — I’ll write something more substantial when I’ve listened to it some more — but I find myself thinking after only two go-rounds about what today’s musicians can do with all those sound resources at their disposal and what it is they need to do with them in order to make lasting art.

Anybody else have any thoughts on this issue? Post away.