Roman’s philosophy

Joshua Roman could be any incredibly bright, 23-year-old graduate student in some university city.

Casual, cool appearance. Open to new experiences and new friends. Not averse to hitting the club scene. Enjoys music from the classics to jazz to rock and rap.

Only one of the descriptions does not fit Roman: He is not a graduate student.

Roman is the the principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony. In his second season with the orchestra, he is its youngest first-chair player.

He’ll be the soloist Friday in the Spokane Symphony’s first Casual Classics concert at its new home, the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox.

Roman will perform Dmitri Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Music Director Eckart Preu will conduct a program that also includes Ottorino Respighi’s “The Birds” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“The Pastorale”).

Born in Shawnee, Okla., Roman grew up mostly in the suburbs around Oklahoma City.

“My father is a church choir director by trade,” he says. “But he played the cello when he was in college, and my mother played the violin and piano.

“When I was 3 my parents were trying to decide what instrument I was going to play. My father whispered sweet things about the cello in my ear about the mellow greatness of the tone of the cello compared with the scratchiness of the violin. At 3, you’re pretty suggestible.”

Home schooled with this three younger siblings, Roman studied cello with violinist Lacy McLarry, the concertmaster of the Oklahoma City Symphony.

“He shaped my concept of how to listen and my concept of what I liked to listen for in my playing,” Roman says.

“He talked about Heifetz all the time, and about tone and stage presence – very, very old school.

“Despite the ridiculous changes that have taken place in my life, I still tend see music with Mr. McLarry’s glasses on, so to speak.”

After a summer studying with Richard Aaron, a cello teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Roman was invited to attend the school. There he worked with Aaron and with Desmond Hoebig in a five-year program that led to both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“After graduating, I spend a sit-back-and-think year,” Roman says. “I subbed some with the Cleveland Orchestra, taught a few students, and had jobs that put me in the car with five minutes to get somewhere to sight read something.

“That led to some great gigs. But mainly it let me sort out the things I learned from various teachers, a process I’m still in, naturally.”

In addition to performing with the Seattle Symphony, Roman is artistic director of the Town Series, concerts given at Seattle’s Town Hall that cover a range of music from the 17th-century violin composer Heinrich Biber to songs by Radiohead.

“My first big passion is playing music,” Roman says. “But just as important, I want to reach a wider audience than just the usual classical music audience.

“I love Yo-Yo Ma, and his collaboration with people from different cultures and different genres has opened a door that classical musicians should be just running through.”

Roman first encountered Kabalevsky’s Concerto No. 1, the work he will perform on Friday, when he was a student in Cleveland.

“I had a good friend who was learning it,” he says, “and I thought, ‘This is a real audience-pleaser – a work that is really good, but lighter than most of the emotionally heavily loaded 20th-century concertos for the cello.’ ”

Unlike previous seasons at The Met (now the Bing Crosby Theater), the symphony will present only one performance of each of its three Casual Classics concerts this season at the Fox.

As is traditional with the series, Preu will give spoken program notes for each of the works on the program, illustrated by examples of the music played by the orchestra.