Daniel Bernard Roumain | Except Love

EXCEPT LOVE takes its title from the song, I Have Nothing to do Except Love, which is a quote from my mother. She said it during an ZOOM interview in which I asked her, “Mom, what do you do these days?”, and she replied, “Oh, you know, Danny, I have nothing do to except love these days.” The moment she said that, it was clear to me that those words were the title to a song where the lyrics would come from her and me.

Each work in this program is intimate. They come from small spaces speaking to the hard work of just being alive. These small compositions allow all of us to gather and consider one another and our shared time together. You could see and hear them as vignettes in a pas de deux with those elusive, whispered meditations that occur when everything is still and quiet and open—the night light in the corner of your childhood bedroom that reminds us of the promise of dreams over nightmares with a belly full of hot chocolate.

I invited Yangfan Xu, an accomplished young composer and performer in Boston, because we share a joy and fascination with certain sounds and ideas. I invited Michael Hebb, an Internationally renown writer and founder of Death Over Dinner, because we have been in collaboration for over 20 years and he’s everything safe and familiar to me. And I invited artists from Longy School of Music, because they represent this feeling of being home when we are on stage with one another making music.

Know, my mother has vascular dementia. The day is coming where she won’t remember much of anything, and that includes me. And as terrifying and sad as that all might appear, the focus isn’t on her losing her heart and mind, rather, it’s on me framing her words into the magic that they are: a score of endless, boundless possibilities for us all.