photo by: Jasmina Tomic/TED

Joshua Roman performing at a second dress rehearsal at TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, on Monday, April 15, 2024.

It was a Friday night after cellist and composer Joshua Roman performed Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto — a piece he looked forward to playing again the following day — when everything changed.

He was positive for COVID-19, and while he expected to only be sick for a week, it wasn’t long until he realized his symptoms weren’t going away.

“I was having trouble speaking, thinking, standing and walking,” Roman said. “I couldn’t taste or smell anything. It was really throwing me for a loop.”

Eventually, he was diagnosed with long COVID, and there weren’t straightforward treatments for his lingering symptoms – brain fog, fatigue, and times when he “crashed” from playing just two minutes of his cello.

“And that was my first true glimpse into the energy required for cognitive tasks because it was 20 minutes of playing or less than two minutes of practicing, and I would have the same effect.”

In the summer of 2023, more than two years after he first developed long COVID, he started going down a new musical path. He decided to record an album, “Immunity,” which reflected his experience of COVID and his journey towards healing. This fall, Roman will embark on a nationwide tour to promote his album, and he will be performing at various COVID clinics, including one with the University of Kansas on Oct. 3.

He describes the project as an opportunity to be vulnerable in a way he hadn’t experienced before. Roman’s album has since revealed itself as a means to connect with people on a deeper level.

A song featured on his album, also called Immunity, was a piece that expressed all the lessons he learned from long COVID. But it wasn’t easy for him to get right.

“I felt like it was important that it started with the crash and then the struggle and the lessons and the ups and downs and all that,” Roman said. “I just couldn’t get that. I couldn’t find it. I was very frustrated because everything that I was writing at the time, to me, sounded too groovy or too happy.”

When his recording session arrived, the piece remained unfinished. He chose to embrace the process, allowing himself to compose whatever emerged in the moment.

“I was so disappointed that it wasn’t this serious, epic piece, but it ended up being one of my favorite, most joyful things to play,” Roman said. “I realized that I couldn’t force myself to write the piece that I wanted, but when I let go and was just in the moment playing, I came away with the piece that I needed.”

While he is touring the “Immunity” program, he hopes the public will better understand the space for long COVID and other illnesses, which at times can be hard to see.

“I believe that if we take care of the people who are most affected by disability or vulnerability or whatever it is, then we’re really doing a good thing for all of us,” Roman said.

“There’s that thing starting from long COVID and then the other side of the coin,” he said. “I think we all need to embrace our vulnerability as a strength rather than trying to hide it because what else are we here for then to connect with people and experience life together.”

Roman has been playing the cello since he was three years old, and from that early age, he knew he wanted to continue doing it forever. At just 22, he was the youngest principal cellist in the Seattle Symphony and has since performed as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and numerous other orchestras.

“I can remember feeling very strongly that the cello was somehow it for me,” Roman said. “Whatever other ambitions I had in my life, they were going to be channeled through music and through the cello.”

Roman’s debut solo album “Immunity” will be released on Oct. 4. The twelve-track album will feature compositions from J.S. Bach, Allison Loggins-Hull, George Crumb, Caroline Shaw, Leonard Cohen, and two of Roman’s own compositions. In the Fall of 2024, Roman will tour the Immunity program to Long COVID clinics across the United States, with the first stop in Fruita, CO on Sept. 10.