Meet Roman Goron

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Roman Goron. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Roman, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

When I was 3 years old, I was diagnosed with selective mutism, an anxiety disorder that rendered me unable to speak or interact in public settings. Although I no longer struggle with using words to express myself today, my purpose follows a thread of expression and creation that started very young, with a necessity to find a means for understanding the world and discovering ways of interacting with it. Before I can remember, art and music have had inextricable ties to the extraneous, drawing parallels with the world at large on a personal level. Through music, I could get closer to the things I did understand – feelings, stories, nature. Through observing and experiencing, this searching during my childhood silently informed my aspirations and reason for creating art. Today, I aim to share that very potential that music has to be a conduit towards purpose and understanding, with the world.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a musician, producer and composer currently spending most of my time performing shows as a sideman and as a leader in and around Seattle, as well as composing and recording music at my home studio in Bellevue, WA. I feel very fortunate to be a part of the Seattle Jazz Scene. I graduated high school just under 2 years ago and quickly gained mentorship and experience playing with many local musicians – veterans such as Jay Thomas, Thomas Marriott & Paul Gabrielson to name a few. Nowadays I try to be as involved as I can in the community; one of the projects I began undertaking this past year is a weekly livestream from my home studio every Sunday with a plethora of the scene’s musicians – a jazz jam broadcast I call “Roman’s Session”. Throughout the last couple years, I’ve been fortunate to have participated in events outside of Seattle as well, and won national competitions including 4 Downbeat Student Music Awards for composition and soloist, 1st Place at the Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition and this year’s Jazz Piano winner for the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition where I’ll be travelling to Indianapolis at the end of June.

I began playing piano at age 5. Because I wasn’t the most responsive student, I didn’t take many lessons and thereafter became mostly self-taught. At 10 years old I started producing music while living in Paris and would record improvised piano pieces into my computer and arrange electronic samples and instruments to find new timbral possibilities. A couple years later I discovered Jazz listening to Rob Araujo and Anomalie, and subsequently Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau. Most recently I’m very grateful to have won a commission to compose and present an original suite of music at the 2025 Earshot Jazz Festival, where I’ll be melding electronic production with acoustic instruments in my largest compositional undertaking to date. The concept for the piece is a 3-movement suite whose motion rests upon the cyclical blossoming and decaying of the world’s natural cycles. I’ll be using natural influences, field recording, electronic production and Jazz at the core in order to weave the story.

This event will mark a transition for me. In a couple of months, I’ll be moving to New York City to attend The Juilliard School and make my way into the New York Jazz Scene. I am very grateful for this opportunity and couldn’t be more grateful to all the people and experiences that have shaped me these past few years. I am not leaving Seattle behind but taking it with me to a new place, in search of new heights.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three qualities that are continually informative and impactful in my journey are intentionality, work ethic and curiosity. Intentionality, to me, is being clear with yourself about the purpose and direction of your work – the why and the what. When I feel I’m losing sight of why I am creating in the first place, the heights of the end product and trying to render these abstract notions into concrete goals and feelings are a guiding light; Intentionality reminds me to take a moment to think though time, through the thread of the past and the future and remember why I do this altogether. Work ethic is self-explanatory – the discipline of doing what you need to do to achieve those goals regardless of how you feel in the moment. I use notebooks and a regimented day-to-day schedule to make progress and dictate an outline for my days. Curiosity speaks to the present moment – it means to always remember what you love, to follow it, to understand with the breadth of knowledge you have yet to discover, and to be open to the discomfort of venturing into those new territories.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

Acceptance of where I am on my journey is a challenge I am currently facing. The balance between craft and artistry, between myself and others, between over-thinking and letting go. Acceptance is a concept that permeates my entire musical process, from the minute I sit down at the piano to stepping onto a performance on stage. I get in my head a lot about comparison, perfectionism, the uncertainty of progress and my musical identity. Acceptance and letting go is about being fully aware and understanding those thoughts that create fear and making a conscious decision in the moment to place value in the understanding that your art is valuable on its own in the context of time, of your progression and of your journey. Shifting the focus from the outcome of your work to its exploration, and the learning that takes place when you let yourself fail and wander through uncertainty is what I am currently working on applying and nurturing on a day-to-day basis.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Catherine Goron

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