World Premiere: February 23, 2012
Most Recent HSO Performance: This is the HSO's first performance of this work.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, drum set, harp, piano, synthesizer, and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass
Duration: 21'

Daniel Bernard Roumain (known by his initials, DBR), like many of his 21st-century colleagues, is a musical omnivore, classically trained as a composer and violinist but whose performances and compositions draw on such wide-ranging influences as funk, rock, hip-hop, jazz, pop and African-American traditions. It is indicative that he leads a band called DBR & THE MISSION, whose nine young, multi-cultural musicians include an amplified string quartet, drum kit, keyboard, DJ, and laptops — he describes their performances as “an evening of chamber music with the accessible feel of a rock concert.” DBR was born in 1971 into a Haitian-American family in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, started playing violin at five, grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he attended Dillard Center for the Arts, and earned his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and his doctorate in composition at the University of Michigan as a student of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom. As a violinist, performer and conductor, DBR has appeared with Cassandra Wilson, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Lincoln Center Summer Festival, Melbourne Arts Festival, Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and at technology conferences. He is a recognized leader in the arts industry, serving on the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and Creative Capital, the advisory committee of the Sphinx Organization (which supports minority participation in the performing arts), and was co-chair of 2015 and 2016 conferences of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. DBR has composed for and collaborated with a diverse array of orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and dance companies in Europe and America, appeared widely with his own band, served numerous residencies, and in 2016 joined the faculty of Arizona State University in Tempe; in 2017, his opera We Shall Not Be Moved, written in collaboration with librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and director–choreographer Bill T. Jones, was premiered at Opera Philadelphia. Among DBR’s honors is a nomination for a Sports EMMY for Outstanding Musical Composition for his collaboration with ESPN.

Dancers, Dreamers and Presidents was commissioned in 2010 by the Sphinx Commissioning Consortium, comprising the Cincinnati, Detroit, Nashville, New Jersey, New World, Richmond and Virginia Symphonies, Philadelphia Orchestra and Sphinx Organization. Of it, Daniel Roumain wrote, “On October 29, 2007, Senator Barack Obama appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Every guest of the show is invited to dance with DeGeneres, and as Obama made his way downstage to meet her, she met him halfway, and together, they danced.

“It was a moment full of obvious joy and humor, and the studio audience (and I imagine millions more around the world) enthusiastically cheered and shouted for them. I did, too. But months later, while the debates on race, religion, identity, and sexual orientation raged on, I thought back to those few moments and realized just how special, and meaningful, their dance was.

“Here was a young, mixed-race, heterosexual man dancing with a young, white, lesbian woman, all on national television. Could this scene have happened in the 1960s, 1970s, or even 1980s? It all made for great television, and even greater theater, but as a composer, I was inspired by the total relevance of it all, that our future president had found yet another way to communicate the sharp wit of his intellectual prowess: through the comfortable ease of his hips and body. Obama, to some, has always been good looking, but now his dancing body carried political capital. He wasn’t just young; he was cool — and hot! And if he could dance with anyone, what else could he do? Isn’t dancing with someone just another way of talking with someone? Doesn’t a great dance partner make for a great conversationalist?

“Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents takes its title and inspiration from the 21-second dance shared by Obama and DeGeneres. Each word of the title represents a movement in the piece, and each movement revolves around the instruments of the orchestra combining, layering, and ‘dancing’ with one another. Dancers begins with a loud, banging solo for the timpani and drum kit, and the music of this movement is derived almost entirely from the rhythms of the drum kit’s low, pounding kick-drum. Dreamers begins with the ominous growls of the contrabass section, followed by the interlocking of small, constantly repeating musical vignettes assigned to each section of the orchestra. Presidents begins with the sound of a synthesizer and its repeated chordal patterns, but it quickly evolves into a hip-hop beat, clear melodic fragments, and techno-inspired block chords.

“As a composer, it’s always been challenging for me to find inspiration in purely musical ideas. I’m much more comfortable creatively responding to the hotbed issues of our daily news, the struggles within our communities, and the heated debates that can happen in our homes. The original plan of this piece was to have the musicians clap their hands, stomp their feet, sing, shout, and preach (testify!) to the audience exactly what I was thinking. I even thought that the words of Obama and DeGeneres would make for a fascinating libretto that I could set for a chorus comprising the members of the orchestra. However, after months of careful consideration, I realized one of the most appealing aspects of instrumental music, devoid of text, was its ability to allow the audience member to assign his/her own ideas, words, and meanings to the music. The intrinsic, and elusive, nature of instrumental music allows us, both as listeners and as followers, the ability to hear the voice of the composer and complete those sentences of sound. In this way, listening to good music is like dancing with a great friend; it’s all about the partnership.

“Watching Obama and DeGeneres dance might not save or change our world, but it certainly says many things about where we were, who we are, and how we all will get there as ‘one nation under God’ (or ‘under a groove,’ depending on who you are). Maybe the journey begins not by screaming at each other, but by dancing with one another.

“So tonight, like Bowie: ‘Let’s dance!’”

©2021 Dr. Richard E. Rodda