Daniel Bernard Roumain & the DBR Lab returns to National Sawdust to present cross-disciplinary talent by six emerging artists from Arizona State University. Original projects explore movement, digital media, music, and spoken word. Featuring special guests Jeff McMahon (writer/actor), Melanie Holm (soprano/dancer), Earl Maneein (violinist), Jonathan Weber (violinist) and Laura Metcalf (cellist).

DBR Lab was founded by Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), is managed by Malena Grosz, and documented by Keegan Carlson. The Lab operates in close collaboration with DBR Music Productions, SOZO Artists, ASU GAMMAGE and is in residence at the School of Music, Dance and Theatre, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University.

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About Daniel Bernard Roumain

Professor and Director of DBR Lab

PhD Music Composition
www.danielroumain.com

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a Black, Haitian-American composer who sees composing as collaboration with artists, organizations and communities within the farming and framing of ideas. He is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), Roumain has worked with artists from J’Nai Bridges, Lady Gaga and Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones, Marin Alsop and Anna Deavere Smith.

Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores. He has composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection); released and appeared on 30 album recordings; and has published over 300 works. He has appeared on CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NPR, and PBS; and has been presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Sydney Opera House. Currently, he is the first Artistic Ambassador with Firstworks; the first Artist Activist-in-Residence at Longy School of Music; and the first Resident Artistic Catalyst with the New Jersey Symphony.

Roumain is an Atlantic Center Master Artist, a Creative Capital Grantee, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has won the American Academy in Rome Goddard Lieberson Fellowship; a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship Award; an Emmy Award for The New Look of Classical Music; National Sawdust Disruptor Award; and the Sphinx Organization Arthur L. Johnson Award. He currently serves as a board member for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (Vice Char), the League of American Orchestras, and is a voting member for the Recording Academy GRAMMY awards.

A student of William Albright, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom, Roumain graduated from Vanderbilt University and earned his doctorate in music composition from the University of Michigan. He is currently a tenured Associate and Institute Professor at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

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About Jeff McMahon

Jeff McMahon is a professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, where he taught 2001-2022. A writer/performer since 1980, he explores the kinetics of language and the merging of fiction and non-fiction through the performing body. MFA Nonfiction Writing, School of the Arts, Columbia University; BA Interdisciplinary Art, SUNY/Empire State College.

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About Melanie Holm

Melanie Holm is a soprano, dancer, & choreographer reframing standard opera repertory through a movement-driven lens. Recent performances include premiering choreographed arias with WaxWorks, Fertile Ground, Reaction Dance Company, & Borne Dance Company. Melanie is an Assistant Teaching Artist at the Mark Morris Dance Center, and interns with Alexandra Beller/Dances.

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About Earl Maneein

“Earl is a kick ass player who pushes the creative boundaries.”

- Robert Trujillo, bassist of Metallica

I’m a violinist/ violist/ composer/ arranger whose personal work stands at the somewhat unlikely crossroads of Western Classical music, Heavy Metal, and Hardcore Punk. Here's three bullet points of career stuff: A violin concerto that will be released through Cedille Records featuring Rachel Barton Pine, Tito Muñoz and the Royal National Scottish Orchestra in August of 2023, a five minute symphonic work for Carnegie Hall, and arrangements for Vitamin String Quartet and The Dillinger Escape Plan. 

I have three personal projects: Black Heart Sutra, Resolution15, and SEVEN)SUNS. All three projects explore the role of the violin in extreme music in various forms.

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About Jonathan Weber

Jonathan Weber enjoys a versatile musical career as a violinist, violist, conductor, composer, and educator. He has shared stages with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Billy Joel, Jay Z, Taylor Swift and more. He has appeared conducting on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, can be seen performing on screen in Sex and the City 2, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Succession, and he has recorded for numerous film and television soundtracks. Mr. Weber currently serves as a professor of violin, viola and chamber music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College (CUNY). Please visit: www.jonathanwebermusic.com

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About Laura Metcalf

Laura Metcalf, cellist, is renowned worldwide as a passionate solo and chamber musician. She tours with her duo Boyd Meets Girl and string quartet The Overlook, and has toured with four-time Grammy winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, Break of Reality, Sybarite5, The Knights, and many others at such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Caramoor, Ravinia, Moab, and Newport Classical festivals.

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About Lane Swenson

Arts Management Fellow

MFA in Dance

Lane Swenson is an artist, educator, research scholar and current MFA - Dance student. He specializes in Ballroom dance and aspires to continue to develop research in the form. He is currently serving as the Arts Management Fellow for the DBR Labspace.

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About Malena Grosz

Managing Director, DBR Lab

MFA Theatre (Arts Entrepreneurship and Management)

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Malena Grosz has been managing the DBR Lab since its inception in 2018. She is an arts event consultant and creative project manager currently based in Austin, Texas. She is also the host of the Party Pro Toolkit podcast, sharing stories and ideas from party professionals across the country.

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About Julio-Cesar Sauceda

MFA Dramatic Writing

Julio-Cesar Sauceda is a multidisciplinary artist working in theatre and film as a writer, actor and director.

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About Alecea Housworth

MFA in Dance

Alecea Housworth is an African American artist in dance and storytelling. Her creative practice centers on social justice and shedding light on issues.

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About Addison Hill

Bachelor of Music (Music Composition)

Addison Hill (she/they) is a composer, artist, and musician from Phoenix, Arizona. Her works are a colorful, messy, and vulnerable collage of her identity and viewpoint of the world.

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About Dean Saifullin
MFA in Dance (Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance concentration)

Dean Saifullin is a dancer, educator, and multidisciplinary artist. He is pursuing an MFA in Dance degree at ASU. His main focus is exploration of mind-body connection and beyond through interdisciplinarity.

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About Kara Piatt
Doctoral Student (DMA) in orchestral/opera conducting

Kara Piatt is an orchestral conductor who is passionate about bringing classical music back to large audiences around the world through shared experiences of music-making, collaborating, and learning.

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About Colin Cossi
Master of Music, Choral Conducting

Colin is a choral artist: conductor, composer, teacher, singer, and writer. With a lens of story-telling, inclusion, and justice, he uses singing as a bridge between people and their stories.

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