Encounter #14: A Russian Melody with Roman
This week's Encounter is with 9 to 5'er artist, Roman Yakobov. Roman was born in Tajikistan, grew up in Israel, and now currently resides in New York where he is pursuing a PhD in chemical engineering. Outside of his research, Roman enjoys pursuing his passion for singing. For his Encounter, Roman has chosen to share his rendition of Zhuravli (Cranes) by composer, Yan Frenkel. If you would like to learn more about Roman and his passion for singing, please check out his bio on The Characters page of this website.
I consider my first Encounter with Roman a unique one because I Encountered the voice before I Encountered the person. How is that possible? Well, if you have ever worked in a laboratory, you may notice that the echo in some lab spaces is phenomenal. As singers, we live for these kinds of spaces. When we find them, whether they be hotel bathrooms, stairwells, or electrochemistry labs at a university, we cannot help but test out the acoustics. One evening, after a long day of work at my university, I was waiting for the elevator when, all of sudden, I was startled by a loud operatic voice that echoed down the corridor. The voice was singing in a foreign language but the power and somber emotion behind it transgressed the language barrier and left me transfixed. I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from; almost everyone on the floor had left for the day already. It seemed like it was coming from a lab but I was finding it hard to believe that our engineering building was the home of an opera singer. Perplexed and amused, I listened to the powerful voice continue to sing until my elevator came. As the elevator doors closed, I made a note to myself that I must track down the owner of that voice for Encounters.
The phantom voice made an appearance a few times more at my university, in stairwells and mystery labs, before I was able to track down the man behind it. To make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I asked my boss if he too would randomly hear opera sometimes coming from the labs. Without even looking up from the exams he was grading, my boss replied matter-of-factly, “Yeah, that’s Roman”. And that, my friends, was my first Encounter with Roman, our resident laboratory singer.
It has been a pleasure for me to feature Roman on Encounters because I got to learn his story, along with the rest of the Encounters community, through this project. His diverse international life experiences inform his music as he tackles a variety of genres in his song selection and brings to light the beauty in the old and forgotten styles. His deep passion for his art is evident in the balancing act he manages between singing and the demands of a chemical engineering PhD. As Roman passionately pursues both of his dreams, I encourage him to keep filling the halls and labs of the engineering school with his songs, even while he is making batteries.
And now, without further ado, I present to you our Encounter with the singer, Roman Yakobov.
P.S. If you would like to hear more of Roman's covers, please click here to check out his YouTube channel :)