Daniel Bernard Roumain

Daniel Bernard Roumain

Roumain has composed music for and is a featured performer in the Breathing Show by dancer/Choreographer Bill T. Jones, and has recently been commissioned by the Buglisi/Forman Dance Co., Coyote Dancers Inc., former pilobus dancer Trebien Pollard, and Katie Langan, former Twyla Tharp company dancer and Director of Dance of the Marymount Manhattan Dance Department. He has also collaborated on performances with DJ Spooky (a.k.a. Paul Miller), performance artist John Fleck, the composer Philip Glass and members of the Philip Glass Ensemble, the conductor/flutist Paul Dunkel, and pianist Christopher Oldfather.

Roumain has been associated with the most prestigious dance schools and their dance companies since moving to New York City in 1998. He is a staff accompanist and musician for the Juilliard School and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and has continuing associations with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Jose Limon Dance School, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Merce Cunningham School of Dance, the Joffrey Ballet, and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. His performing skills extend beyond the piano to voice, guitar, bass, percussion instruments, flute, viola, and both electric and acoustic, violin, his principal instrument. Roumain deftly switches from playing solo Bach piano works to singing pop songs to performing guitar with his funk band, DBR's Mission, embracing a worldview that crosses and blends cultural, ethnic and stylistic boundaries.

Roumain is active in educating the community about the universal language of music. The Music Factory program brought Roumain into a Harlem elementary school and the High School for Environemntal Studies. Using Harlem Essay as a musical example for use, he worked from the reference point of hip-hop music to bring students into the world of concert music.

Roumain took to music at a young age and by his teens had performed with such radically diverse artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Two Live Crew and Ray Charles. Upon graduation from the Dillard School of the Performing Arts, Roumain studied composition and performance at Vanderbilt University from which he received his Bachelor of Music degree. In the spring of 2000, Roumain completed his doctoral work at the University of Michigan, where he received his Masters in Music Degree. His teachers have included William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty and William Albright. Among the honors Roumain has garnered are the University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellowship award, a Helen F. Whitaker Commission and the Silver Knight Award. Daniel Bernard Roumain currently resides in Harlem in New York City.


NOTES on
String Quartet No. 1, "The X String Quartet" is my first work in this
medium and tonight^Rs performance marks the world premiere. This work
was influenced by the string quartets of Beethoven and Bartok, the writings
of Alex Haley and Malcolm X, and both hip-hop and rock music. Performed
without pause, this work is respectfully dedicated to both Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King, Jr.
-Daniel Bernard Roumain

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