Joshua Roman debuts with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and performs Stock premiere in Seattle

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Cellist Joshua Roman is now a familiar figure to YouTube users around the world. The April 15th concert, which featured Roman as a soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, has been viewed more than 1.3 million times in the past month. Roman's solo spot playing Bach at the sold-out event was introduced (on video) by one of his role models, Yo-Yo Ma:

"Occasionally I get to meet an extraordinary young musician. Such is the case with Joshua Roman. ... To me, Joshua is one of the great exemplars of the ideal 21st-century musician. He's deeply grounded in a classical tradition and he is a fearless explorer of our world."

This week the 25-year-old cellist returns to the Seattle Symphony for the world premiere of David Stock's Cello Concerto with conductor James DePreist. Roman has strong ties with the orchestra there: he was appointed principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony at age 22 and held the position for two years.

As well as keeping up a busy concert schedule, Roman has also embarked on his own online video series called "The Popper Project": every week he uploads to his YouTube channel a performance of an etude from David Popper's "The High School of Cello Playing: 40 Etudes". Each performance is unedited and filmed wherever Roman and his laptop happen to be.

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