If you are here, thank you for stopping by! this is my digital home address and the place i will share my shows, my music, and other updates about recordings and projects. I am pondering an exit from social media, so it seemed to be prudent to create this site - Roland 2026

I studied biology in Masschusetts and moved to New York City in the summer of 2000 to get signed to a major label as a singer/songwriter. It almost happened a couple years later, when Dave from Decca Records expressed interest in my songs, and took me out for drinks a couple times—but the vice president (I think they had many vice presidents) left my show early at the Living Room on Ludlow Street on May 7, 2003. I was disappointed, but also somehow relieved. I had a batch of songs inspired by Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, which I had arranged for string trio. in those days i was also dabbling around as a violinist in a cheekily named band "Chelsea mountain boys", doing tributes to artists such as loretta lynn and dolly parton.

but my violin playing was really rekindled when I accidentally discovered Afro-Cuban music at a party i attended with some William Paterson students, who invited me to sit in with them at their weekly cuban son/salsa gig at a Spanish tapas bar on the lower east side of Manhattan, called Xunta. One thing led to another, and within a few years I had quit my laboratory job at Columbia University and was playing Latin American music at restaurants and clubs—and actually making a living. It is a testament to Latin culture in New York that I managed to pay the rent while playing with some truly amazing musicians, including Albita, Pedrito Martinez, and Ariacne Trujillo.

I was also tangentially exposed to jazz, although my love and passion for it would only come later, after I moved to Europe. I remember hanging out with chris potter and jamming at ari hoenig's house, recording tyshawn sorrey at mine, and playing my songs at Manhattan School of Music with kim thomson, anne drummond. I also collaborated with oren bloedow, ben perowsky, ed pastorini, and many others. I also got involved with sketch and improv comedy, and provided musical accompaniment to comedians performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade. I vaguely remember rehearsing for a Halloween show with Horatio Sans at the apartment of Tina Fey, and also work with a prodigiously talented improv comedy duo, called "lennon and McCartney" consisting of Jodi Lennon and Patrick Mccartney. the Talent and dedication i witnessed in New York City remains indelibly imprinted on my soul, as i forge a life in far more laid back Beriln.

after getting burned out by dickhead restauranteur bosses and shitty grocery stores (the affordable ones, anyway) in West Harlem and then Washington Heights, where I lived, as well as my own megalomanic dreams, i decided to leave it all behind, and move to Europe, potentially stopping my musical career.

Berlin was not a long-term plan; it simply presented itself as a candidate for my new home while I was touring European capital cities in 2006 with the Czech singer Marta Töpferová. I had the itch to leave the USA and discover the continent of my mother. She was born in Budapest and grew up in England. So, on July 4th, 2008, I moved to Berlin, and shortly thereafter attended Barack Obama’s famous speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten.

One year turned into many. And despite my idea of changing careers (alternative energy interested me) I found myself playing gypsy jazz with a street music band that needed a singer and violinist - Django Lassi. with Django Lassi, I toured Europe and beyond, and started to study harmony in ernest, realizing that I was no longer content to only vaguely understand what was happening in more complex songs than the blues or “Autumn Leaves.” Django Reinhardt was at the center of my professional life for about eight years, . Some years we played over 100 concerts—a mix of Balkan-inspired and Reinhardt-inspired originals.

In 2017, as our engagements (and enthusiasm for bohemian touring) were waning, I founded a new band inspired by the Ganaian Kwashibu Band , who I saw at Fusion Festival around 2016. Since my New York days, I had always felt that my voice as a songwriter could never quite come through on the guitar, my instrument of choice for accompanying my singing. The profound joy and percussive nature of the Kwashibu Band gave me the idea and impetus to form a new band, Tolyqyn, with plucked viola at its core. it was in this band that i finally found a voice as a singersongwriter that i felt comfortable with. one that had humor, not just the angst of millennial cusp American youth. we released our debut album in 2020, and a second in 2023.

my tolyqyn texts are often political, the viola goes through an octaver, and serves the role of bass, and drums and guitar round out the trio. This band is still active, and together with my co-founder—the illustrious and prodigiously talented Tal Arditi— I also recently founded my newest band, RSQ.

During my years with Django Lassi, I never stopped teaching myself harmony, often playing late into the night—John Coltrane and other standards pushing my harmonic understanding into new territory. at some point i fell deeply in love with wayne shorter's album High life from the 1990's, and made a commitment to myself to "master harmony"

In 2025, I founded RSQ as the vehicle for my newest venture: a primarily instrumental group exploring the potential of the violin in a modern jazz context. My favorite composers in the genre are largely non-idiomatic players—musicians who seem to me above all to be harmonic masters and explorers, and only then to be jazz musicians: Wayne Shorter, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Keith Jarrett, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, to name a few.

In recent years, political events, and conversations with other artists have forced me to reflect more deeply on the responsibility of making art in this terribly cruel and injust world. I was recently particularly struck by an encounter with talented visual artist living in berlin who was furious at how much contemporary art—visual and musical alike—fails to take a stand, even as we live in a time marked by mass killing, techno-fascism, and pro-corporate, anti-human government policy. That exchange left me asking uncomfortable questions about my own work: whether I have been too indulgent, too coded, too content with abstraction, narcissistic in my work...

Looking back, I feel that my lyrics may need to become less encrypted and more brave, and that my instrumental music can strive to reflect the present more directly, rather than remaining an exercise in beauty for its own sake. This tension—between craft and conscience, abstraction and engagement—is something I intend to lean into going forward. Where will these two current projects take me? Only the all-knowing spirit in the firmament around us knows. But I intend wholeheartedly to continue writing political texts and grooves for Tolyqyn (Tal and I are currently producing our third record with the amazing Ivars Arutyunyan on drums), and to play as many gigs as possible with RSQ in the coming months and years. If you know of a booking agency that might fit a violin quartet, please reach out. <3 Roland