It’s a Friday night in uptown Manhattan, and we are being ushered into a crypt lit only by candlelight. It’s enough to make one pause to marvel at the intimacy, the preciousness of such an experience. The crypt, with its vaulted ceilings and close walls, is a bizarrely perfect place for a concert. What awaits us with Immunity, part of the Crypt Sessions put on each year by Death of Classical, will fill the space with a revelatory tale of loss, perseverance, and hope.
Immunity tells the deeply personal story of its curator and performer, Joshua Roman, who was diagnosed with Long COVID in 2021. A cellist from the age of three, he found he suddenly no longer had the strength, let alone the confidence, to play. In Immunity, Roman lays out his journey in both music and words, taking us from the initial days of Long COVID to where he is now.
Immunity begins with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major, a piece which most audiences will recognize. Evocative and uplifting, it’s the perfect entry to the night, especially as Roman shares how important it is to begin with something he had loved as long as he could remember.
Between music selections, Roman opens up with details about the realities of coping with Long COVID. He speaks haltingly, almost as if he is constantly searching out the next word. It’s a testament both to the brain fog he describes as well as the vulnerability of sharing these revelations. But when he picks up his cello again, any uncertainty is gone. Moving through pieces that become more and more experimental, highlighting the emotional journey of his diagnosis, Roman’s utter confidence as one with his cello is a stark and stunning contrast.
Following the opening Bach piece is Allison Loggins-Hull’s Stolen, a dark composition about the fear, rage, and resentment of a child bride. It’s easy to see why Roman would empathize with a stolen future. From there, he transitions to Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas paired with Krzysztof Penderecki’s frenetic Capriccio per Siegfried Palm. These two pieces together are so dichotomously theatrical that they could be a concert unto themselves.
Roman reemerges from the trance that his cello has put us all in to lead the audience through some diaphragmatic breathing, a technique often used by singers as well as Long COVID patients. He explains that he needs to take the time to refocus, and what may be a personal ritual for him becomes a moment of meditation for all of us. Closed up in the comfortingly close space of the crypt, but not so removed from the world that we can’t hear sirens passing by on the streets above our heads, we allow ourselves deep breaths in and out.
The penultimate piece is a composition by the performer himself – his first, he explains, since his diagnosis. Held back by brain fog and other complications, it took him a while to build up the confidence to compose anything at all. “Vulnerability can mean mistakes, and mistakes don’t belong on stage,” he explains sadly. But Immunity, the titular composition, bursts forth from the cello with a quiet joy that marks the concert’s way out of the darker emotions of earlier pieces and towards a hopeful future. Mirroring the familiarity and comfort of the Bach piece that opened the concert, Roman closes by performing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, accompanying his cello with vocals that soar to the low, vaulted crypt ceilings and fill the room.
The final verse rings in my head as we file slowly, as if released from a spell, out of the crypt: “And even though it all went wrong / I’ll stand before the Lord of Song / With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.” The words aren’t only a testament to Roman’s voice, which has the power to reverberate throughout the room despite the grip of Long COVID. This final verse could also be the heart of Immunity: a musician dedicated to his craft, held back by unimaginable hardship but unwilling to let it stop him from performing for the love of music itself.
Curated and performed by Joshua Roman
Compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Allison Loggins-Hull, Caroline Shaw, Krzysztif Penderecki, Joshua Roman, Leonard Cohen
Presented by Death of Classical as part of The Crypt Sessions
The Crypt at Church of the Intercession (Washington Heights)
Photo credit: Andrew Ousley
Running time: 60 minutes, no interval
Run until December 6 2024