Above all, I am a Romantic artist. My musical heroes were Romantic. But the core tenets and principles of Romanticism — belief in the imagination as a means to transcendence and preference to the subjective, non-rational, and the mysterious — are key to my practice. Discovery, among recordings, is both the most revealing of my Romantic core and the one that best reflects my broad interests as a composer and pianist. I’m mixing the influence of Schubert and reminiscences of cowboy songs (“Mariana’s Waltz”), or pursuing departures in the world of Liszt (‘Chorale Prelude,” ‘Chorale Nr. All of this is in the service of the same Romantic intent. My work is based on imaginative relationships with places. Referring to myself as a ‘terrain wrangler’ and a ‘topographical rowdy bent upon revelation-through-landscape,’ I entertain intrigue with lands from the Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains to the Northwoods to the Upper Midwest; from the Piney Woods of southern Mississippi and Alabama to the Intermountain West, and from the northern Great Plains to central and southern Appalachia. My imagination is a dependable home in the landscape. – David Thomas Roberts http://www.davidthomasroberts.com
