Daniel Bernard Roumain

DBR composed the opera, "We Shall Not Be Moved," in collaboration with librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and director and choreographer Bill T. Jones. The opera premiered in Philadelphia on September 16, 2017.

As a band leader, he presents lively, genre-jumping shows with DBR & THE MISSION; nine young, multi-cultural musicians including an amplified string quartet, drum kit, keyboard, DJ, and laptops. Described as “an evening of chamber music with the accessible feel of a rock concert,” the band's multi-disciplinary performances have been applauded at Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, Miami's Caleb Auditorium, NYC's The Cutting Room, Chicago's Northwestern University, Arizona State University's Gammage Memorial Auditorium, Montclair's Kasser Theater, Reno's ArtTown Festival, and as part of Boston's Bank of America Celebrity Series. DBR's 24 Bits: Hip Hop Studies and Etudes were highlighted at the group's sold out Joe's Pub performance — “true to form, these vary greatly in style, from slow, introspective Neo-Classical ruminations to rhythmically complicated, riffy pieces that would not be out of place in a dance club,” (New York Times.). In honor of Black History Month, the band's SQ Unit culminated a nationwide tour of DBR's string quartet program, A Civil Rights Reader, at Washington DC's Library of Congress.

In September 2010, Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents — an orchestral tone poem inspired by Ellen DeGeneres and then-senator Barack Obama — premiered at the New World Symphony (orchestra).

Roumain's compositions include a 2007 debut of BAM's Next Wave Festival featuring One Loss Plus (his fifth evening-length solo show) for violin, video, and chamber ensemble; 24 Bits: Hip Hop Studies and Etudes and Event Pieces performed by DBR on piano and laptop; and Call Them All: Fantasy Projections for Film, Laptop, and Orchestra, an orchestral work which received its world premiere at Carnegie's Zankel Hall by the American Composers Orchestra. In etudes4violin&electronix, DBR's debut solo album from Thirsty Ear Records, he works with notable musicians including Philip Glass, Ryuichi Sakamoto, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid and Christian A. Davis (aka DJ Scientific). This hybrid album offers a series of lyrical and pulsing duets and solo works geared towards the iPod generation. In 2008 an excerpt from One Loss Plus was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike.

Daniel Bernard Roumain (known by his initials, DBR; born 1970) is a classically trained composer, performer, violinist, and band-leader noted for blending funk, rock, hip-hop and classical music into an energetic and experiential sonic form. DBR is of Haitian-American heritage and he attended Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music and earned a doctorate in musical composition from the University of Michigan. He combines his classical music roots with a multicolored spectrum of contemporary black popular music. DBR's exploration of musical rhythms and pulsing sounds is frequently peppered by cultural references. His dramatic pieces range from orchestral scores and energetic chamber works to rock songs and electronica. He contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky.