Trust, Joy and the Cello: Joshua Roman on Music and Healing

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The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Even before his diagnosis of long COVID in 2020, cellist Joshua Roman had carved a unique niche in the classical music world. A former principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony turned soloist and curator, Joshua built a career that combined artistic excellence with a passionate commitment to making music relevant and accessible. Whether premiering bold new works or improvising in unexpected settings, he was — and remains — a restless innovator with an unshakable belief in music’s power to heal, connect, and transform.

Long COVID has altered nearly every aspect of Joshua’s life, from his physical stamina to how he plans his days to the way he relates to his instrument. Yet instead of sidelining him, the illness has led Joshua to reevaluate the very foundations of his artistry. The result is a new clarity and focus—not only about which projects deserve his limited energy but also what kind of artistic legacy he wants to build. His latest initiative, “The Immunity Project,” exemplifies this shift: a collection of performances and reflections that foreground music’s emotional and restorative capacity, drawn directly from his personal experience of illness and recovery. The project now also includes a recently released album titled “Immunity.”

In this interview, Joshua opens up about the physical and existential recalibrations he’s made in order to keep performing, why he now only practices when he truly wants to and how chronic illness has deepened his artistic mission. He also shares his hopes for a classical music ecosystem that makes space for artists to be fully, honestly human — onstage and off.

Pier Carlo Talenti: I’d like to talk about where we are, where you find yourself today. We’re on a Friday morning in the spring, and I’m curious about what the rest of the day will look like. How will it be different from what it might have been before your diagnosis four years ago?

Joshua Roman: Yes, I think that’s an interesting place to start. I’ll say first, though it is spring here in New York, it’s pretty chilly outside. I haven’t looked at the weather, but it looks to be about 50, which is what it was yesterday, with a little drizzle maybe. It’s cloudy. The reason that matters to me is that I’m far more affected by weather than I used to be. A hot day, especially a humid hot day, is a struggle, and that in and of itself can really take my energy in a way that it didn’t before, so I have to pay attention to those kinds of things. We’re going to have this conversation and then I’ll take a little break. [He chuckles.] Already just saying that, that’s a new thing.

Then I do have a meeting. I actually have two meetings today. One of them is in person, and one of them is virtual. The big difference is that there’s a big purposeful break in between. I’m considering what to do this evening with family that live in New York City. One of the considerations is that because I already have a travel thing— which is not very far; it’s just a short trip to the lunch —I can’t expect that I’ll be able to take a trip to another borough or even to the edges of Manhattan later in the day and also be able to hang out with nieces and nephews and my sister and her husband.

Something is going to have to be pulled back in there, so they’ll likely have to come here, or we’ll meet in between and it’ll be abbreviated. Previously it would have been, “Let’s just hang until I’m so tired I have to go home and go to sleep.” Now it’s kind of a set time, and then I have to recover.

Pier Carlo: So a lot of energy has to go into calculating as well. Your limited energy also has to be given to formulating a lot of calculations.

Joshua: That’s the biggest thing, that I’m now aware of the need to prioritize, not just by gut but in advance.

Pier Carlo: Are you able to find time to practice?

Joshua: Yes, I am. One of the interesting things that’s changed —  this is opening up a very different path of conversation that we’ll probably get into later — is that my practicing is very different now. Yesterday all I did was improvisation. Today I’m not really sure what I’m going to try to tackle because my next performance is pretty low-key. It’s repertoire that I’ve done over and over again. I know it like the back of my hand. 

In the past, I would have thought, “Every day is a day that I have to improve in a technical, measurable, visible way or else I’m falling behind.” Now my focus is on the relationship with the cello and the trust that’s there. This week has felt really good in terms of that, and so I’m not feeling like today is a day that I have to push it. If anything, it’ll be a relaxed session of joy, improvising or maybe learning something new or who knows.

Pier Carlo: Boy, you bring up something very frightening, I think: the possibility of falling behind. 

Joshua: Yes!

Pier Carlo: You must have been living with that for a while now.

Joshua: Well, yes. I’m curious how many of your listeners would relate to some of the things that have been running through my head and floating around there for as long as I can remember. Things like “Practice makes perfect,” which my dad would revise into, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” You know, you can’t just sit there and play. It has to be what you’re going to do. And I’m sure I’m getting this wrong at this point — I’ve never bothered looking it up — but it was drilled into me: Heifetz saying, “If I miss one day of practice, I know. If I miss two days, the critics know. If I miss three days, the whole world knows.” It’s that idea that it’s such a fragile point.

Here’s another one. “You’re only as good as your last performance.” OK, does that mean that spending an uncountable number of hours working on “bettering your ability to play your instrument” is what’s going to make the next performance better? Well, it depends. It depends on what the problem was. That’s where I think a lot of these things fall short, and I’ve known that for a long time. I’ve always had a kind of analytical approach to practicing, not always to playing, but more and more I’m realizing how much of practicing has been driven by an insecurity rather than a focus on building security and trust.

Pier Carlo: You said something, a beautiful phrase, that this afternoon you’re going to sit in a relaxed session of joy.

Joshua: Yes.

Pier Carlo: That alone has so much value.

Joshua: It’s amazing. I think that’s one of the most important things that’s happened for my relationship with music and in some ways with myself. There’s still a lot of work to do both in terms of understanding this process of evolution for me, but also still there’s always work to do on the cello. I’m not denying that. But it’s the focus. I think there’s been a big shift. It started with me being away from the cello for a while and then having a revelation, coming back and seeing it as a long-lost friend in a way rather than something that I was so accustomed to being around that I took elements of it for granted.

That revelation alone changed a lot of things, but it was really the decision to act on that in particular ways. The biggest one is that I do my best to not practice unless I really want to play the cello. I have to ask myself before I take the cello out of its case, “Is this coming from a place of insecurity or desire?” It’s a layered, complicated, nuanced question with answers that can vary, but simply asking that question has made my relationship with the cello so much healthier and actually helped my playing, helped my focus while practicing, helped my ability to be comfortable onstage.

There’s so much that has grown, even technically, which is counterintuitive, but again, it’s that basis of trust versus insecurity.

Pier Carlo: I feel like there’s a lesson there for any instrumentalist, not only people who are suffering with a chronic illness. What would you tell an overachieving instrumentalist like you once were and still are in many ways about what you’ve learned regarding your relationship with your instrument?

Joshua: That’s a really good question. I would just always go back to, “Is this going to build trust or is this going to increase this dependence on check marks and verification and exacerbate an underlying insecurity?” It’s a really complicated way of saying, “Does it feel like I’m trying to do something or trying to make sure that I don’t do something and that ‘don’t do something’ is to play out of tune?” Just a big list of no-nos. Are you picking up your instrument with a list of don’ts or a list of dos?

And it’s not about playing your scales. Sure, play your scales. When you play your scales, what are you paying attention to? Can you find things in the garden of your relationship with your instrument to water, to care for, to tend? You are going to pull some weeds, but if you just focus on weeding day in and day out, then not only are you neglecting the flowers, you might even end up pulling some of them out.

Pier Carlo: But you work, however, in a field that is very competitive and where people who hire musicians actually do like the check marks. 

Joshua: Yes.

Pier Carlo: So I’d love to talk about how you’ve shifted your view of what you wanted your career to be since you contracted long COVID.

Joshua: Well, it’s interesting because I think for me really not a lot has changed in terms of my drive, what I might call my mission, why I play the cello. It has simply become clearer, and it’s become easier for me to say no to things that don’t fit that, whereas in the past I might have for logical or illogical reasons contorted to fit other molds. 

First of all, they weren’t feeding my heart, but then after that they also weren’t helping me build the career. The career you build is the career you have, so if you’re doing that by saying yes to things that are not it, that’s what’s going to keep coming to you. There’s no magic point at which you can say, “Well, now I’ve made it by doing this, and so I’m suddenly going to change everyone’s perception of me and be this other kind of artist.” No, your career is your reputation, so that’s what you build. 

The thing that has been most helpful to me is this sense of clarity around my ability to determine that. Not that that means that I can get every gig I want. That’s still difficult. That’s still a challenge, especially for a cellist, but it does mean that I have a much stronger sense of self-confidence in what I’m putting out there. And if it’s not resonating with other people, then that’s OK, but I feel good about what I’m pursuing and I’m not playing some game, even though there still has to be strategy and I have to understand tactics and the career mechanisms. It’s about doing the thing that I love, not about doing something else to please people so that maybe I can pivot and do the thing that I love.

Pier Carlo: You mentioned a mission, which I’d love to hear more about. What has your mission been as a cellist? And does it ever shift?

Joshua: It’s a good question about the shifting. I grew up in a Christian family. I’m from Oklahoma. My parents both worked in the church. I am not religious myself. That’s something that definitely shifted in my teens, but early on I felt the cello like a kind of calling. It’s really difficult for me to stay away from that kind of religious language because of how I grew up and because of how deep it feels and how early it was in my life. 

I don’t remember not playing that cello. I remember when the cello arrived. The UPS lady in her brown shorts, I could see her through the glass door. I was three years old. She looked so tall, that cello was so big — it was a quarter-size; it wasn’t that big — but it was so exciting. I’m sure I remember a couple of things before that, but I don’t remember the cello not being there as a thing, and it was very early on that I was telling people, “This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.” 

I had very naive and grand ambitions that somehow if you do this and you give yourself to it in a really powerful way — again, I think this is very much informed by the religious culture that I was in — you can be a vessel that transforms people’s lives. This is where the shifting of mission comes in. There are times when that felt like a very direct, “If you play in a way where God or Bach or spirituality or whatever it is and the vibrations are pure regardless of what you’re doing, if you play in such a way that that is just flowing perfectly through you, there’s no way anyone could hear that and not be transformed by that experience immediately. Like a life-changing realization.” There’s something in music that is incredibly powerful, but that was a way to put immense pressure on myself. [Chuckling] This need to see an immediate irrevocable impact on people listening to me, it’s a lot to handle. 

Later on, as I moved away from the religious aspects of that, it still had underneath this idea that music is a service, that we do this because it is good, because it helps people and that also it’s not inherent, that music can be used for so many purposes, commercial purposes, even music that militaries will use to rally the soldiers. You could say that that’s doing something positive. In one sense, it’s giving them energy and hope, in another sense to defend themselves or to attack others. It’s not predetermined that all music is inherently just good. 

So really thinking about the music that I play, what is it for? How can I see what it’s doing for people? That’s really where the shifts have come. It wasn’t until long COVID took away my ability to just throw energy at that question and forced me to really choose and make decisions that I found that my answer is really there. What I’m doing now is I’m exploring that basic question: What is the power of music? For me, it begins from a very personal place and a very personal and profound moment of experiencing the power of music myself, even as a musician who is so close to it that at times it can be a little, I don’t know the word for it, but when you’re behind the curtain or you can see how the soup is made or the sausage is made.

That can make us a little jaded in a way, even if we still feel and think that our hearts are in the right place. I had an experience where I was incredibly moved by music and realized no, my mission is not to know and also not to avoid this question but actually to put it front and center: What is the power of music?

Pier Carlo: Certainly one way you answered that through your illness was to put out an album, “Immunity.”

Joshua: Yes.

Pier Carlo: It’s a beautiful and very eclectic album. You sing on it, I think at least twice. I’m sure you never imagined you would record yourself singing.

Joshua: Never. It’s wild. 

Pier Carlo: Tell me about that experience. What were your original thoughts about what that album would be, and how nimble did you have to be as you put it together?

Joshua: Each piece came to me for a different reason, but they came together because a friend asked me to perform a very specific kind of concert that was developed for Princeton University, where she works for their concert series. It’s a new series that they started called "Healing with Music." The idea was a musician that had undergone some kind of profoundly life-changing circumstance would make a program of the music that had healed them — I think that was the original prompt — and they would perform that music and maybe even talk about it.

It was really interesting. There was already a lot swirling in the water, but I hadn’t thought to put it all together and be onstage and present this, like: “Here it is, face value. I’m not going to filter it through some historical lens or try to come up with a clever intellectual approach for this. This is simply the music that has been, in my case, not necessarily healing but the music that has been important to me on this very difficult health journey that I’m on. Here’s a piece of music, here’s why it’s important to me.” That basic approach is what I did for that concert. It’s what I carried through the rest of the project.

 

Pier Carlo: So tell me about the overall project.

Joshua: The album is a part of this project, “The Immunity Project.” It’s something that is malleable enough for me to take to the mainstage of the mothership TED Conference to the Oslo Freedom Forum to Aspen Ideas: Health and also Carnegie Hall Well-Being concerts and to mainstages of wonderful presenting series that are into it. And also residencies at Stanford, Yale, Juilliard.

The thing about this is it allows me to explore this question, the power of music, but I’m able to ask a lot of questions and get a huge amount of engagement while still showing up basically with — though there are some variations — the same repertoire, the same underlying question from the project. It’s really me being the same me rather than doing one thing here and then two days later doing something completely different somewhere else.

Pier Carlo: You get to continue defining your mission rather than letting people who book you define it.

Joshua: Exactly. That doesn’t mean that I don’t take things that people ask me to do; it means they’re filtered through a different process. In the end it’s just so much easier. What that has allowed, which is really exciting, as I was saying, is not only this career growth but also artistic and personal growth because I’m less distracted by constantly feeling like there’s something else that I’m supposed to be working on. I’m working on this right now, and there’s something else that’s coming up next.

In the meantime, there are little projects — [laughing] I’m calling it little just because it’s one weekend, but it’s big — like premiering a new concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In the past, I would have been doing 10 different kinds of programs in the three weeks before, and now I was able to focus on that, really give it what it needed and maintain the project throughout.

Pier Carlo: So it sounds like, though you’re still traveling all over the world and meeting a lot of presenters, you’re still having to marshal your resources. So I have a two-prong question: Do you ever have to cancel when you are just not up to it? And also how has the classical-music ecosystem adapted to your new needs?

Joshua: Those are great questions. The answer to the first is not exactly yes and not exactly no. I’ve never had to cancel at the last minute, but I have looked ahead at an overseas trip that was for one performance during a busy time and with plenty of time ahead said, “You know what? I’m sorry, I thought I could do this, but under these conditions, I don’t believe that I’m going to be able to.” I guess technically that’s a cancellation, but I don’t think anyone was thrown off by that. There was no rush, no sort of stuff that you think of with a last-minute cancellation.

I’ve gotten very adept at understanding my own energy flows, and there’s an element to this of being a performer. I think your listeners who have spent time onstage will understand this. A lot of your regular body processes kind of turn off in a way, or at least your nervous system doesn’t feed you that information while you’re onstage. Sometimes it’s just coughing or sneezing stops, and there are times when this gets overwhelmed, but bodily functions generally are not something that come up onstage that often. And this is one of those in which, to an extent, that kind of works.

The big problem is that pushing through and going with that can mean extreme consequences afterwards. That could be immediately in the dressing room, that could be later that night, definitely the next day, so I’m very careful about my energy in the days leading up to a performance and especially on the day of a performance to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ve learned through trial and error that there are some things that I just can’t do. 

Speaking of the classical music ecosystem, it’s very difficult for me to do a chamber music festival. This is interesting to me because it speaks to the ways that we use energy differently and how we don’t really think about how that’s the case. Energy or not, the devil’s in the details. When I go to play a concerto with an orchestra, I know the piece backwards and forwards before I even get on the airplane. Even the concerto that I premiered with Baltimore, that’s going to be memorized; I’m going to know it; I’m ready. Then I get there, I meet with the conductor, and we go through it. We work things out together so that not only do we understand each other but so that the conductor can be a step ahead when it comes to directing the orchestra, which is the conductor’s job.

I deal with the orchestra directly energetically, of course, and sometimes they even say things, but for the most part, I don’t want to step on the toes of the conductor. That’s their job. My responsibility is to play, and there’s a union that says we can’t play for that long, and there are other pieces on the program. So even though the situation from the perspective of the spotlight being on you is very intense, a lot of the complex decision-oriented things that you have to do in a chamber music rehearsal are not there. That’s just very interesting.

On the other hand, when you do a chamber music festival, especially as a cellist, you’re playing many pieces. It’s likely that you haven’t had that much time to prepare and that the rehearsals are going to be where a lot of things really come together. It’s a very messy, beautiful, democratic process, which means lots of cognitive action. You really are thinking, you’re juggling personalities, desires for the piece, time constraints. Also the union doesn’t really apply in chamber music festivals. You just go. Because you’re in multiple pieces, you’re probably rehearsing all day with a lunch break, and then you’re very likely on the whole concert several times that week because a festival is all about maximizing the locality and the availability of wonderful musicians who are together for a short amount of time. 

The times that I’ve said yes to doing chamber music festivals have been the times where I’ve had the biggest crashes. That’s something that I just don’t do anymore because as much as I love playing chamber music with people, the festival setting is not conducive to my ability to do that. I’ve been finding incredible enrichment with my regular chamber music group now, Tessa Lark on violin and Edgar Meyer on bass. The fact that it’s a steady, regular group allows me to be able to do some of those things that are more difficult when you’re dealing with a range of people and shifting how you think about what you’re doing throughout a given day.

Pier Carlo: Have your colleagues and people who’ve worked with you been able to adapt to your new needs?

Joshua: Yes. Initially there’ll be a, “Well, sure, we can definitely do whatever you need,” and then later people will start reminding me to do it. Then sometimes, maybe even often, I’ll be taken aside and someone will say, “You know what? I’m really glad you’re doing this because it just makes everything so much easier.” Things like I set a timer for 45 minutes and then we take a little break. It just gives everyone in the room a sense of time that isn’t rushed, but we don’t wander off just chatting and end up spending eight hours rehearsing when really we only rehearsed for two.

A lot of what I do to take care of myself now seems like what we all should be taught to do to take care of ourselves generally. It’s not about healing; it’s about understanding and maximizing energy. It’s not specific to long COVID, even though it is very helpful for long COVID. It’s just generally what makes human beings function at their best. That’s been really interesting to see, and I feel like it has changed my ability to be present for the better and my ability to deliver for the better. The people that I work with by and large seem to really appreciate that kind of structure.

Pier Carlo: Since you’ve contracted long COVID, have you found a network or community of musicians with chronic illness and/or disability along the way? And if so, what is the most important thing they want to see changed in the music ecosystem?

Joshua: Wow. I mean, that’s such a perfect question. I’ve had interactions with a lot of people who are dealing with long COVID or other chronic illnesses or even things like tendonitis, and it feels like people are more open, maybe in general after COVID but especially with me because I’ve put it out there that I’ve got this going on. That’s what I would say we need. We need to be more accepting of the human element of performance because the reality is that it’s there whether we like it or not. 

I think about what someone might wonder when they’re about to hire me. “He’s got long COVID, he’s got fatigue and brain fog. Is he going to be able to do this thing on the day we hire him to do it?” Well, there are so many other conditions, whether physical or mental or emotional or substance-related, there are so many things going on with people that are either hidden or very carefully managed and worked around. This is just another one of those. It is interesting to me to think about what it would be like to try to hide it in the way that I think so many people feel they need to when something is human about them, whether it is a physical or any other kind of ailment.

I just don’t think we’re doing ourselves any long-term favors by focusing on this idea that onstage you should be immune from being human. That’s not to say that I’m OK with getting onstage and not performing well. I’m absolutely not. But I’m managing my ability to do that now better than I ever did before because I’m being very open and honest not only with others but with myself about my ability from day to day, from moment to moment. Paying attention to that is turning into an incredible strength rather than something that could sneak up on me.

I’m not asking people to come out. I know it’s very scary to risk what other people are going to say or think, especially in a gig economy, when you say that there’s something wrong with you. But if you’re somebody who is in a position of hiring other people especially, then really think about what that does and the long-term relationships that you’re building with the human beings that you work with, what really the point of what you do is, and ask yourself how you can make space for people to be honest about where they are so that they can actually, really, truly perform their best and feel their best with you.