Roman has performed with such prominent groups as the London Mozart Players, London Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Musica Viva Orchestra, Russian Philharmonia, Kremerata Baltica, Prague Soloists, and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.
Roman has also performed with the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble – the oldest contemporary music group in Russia.
He has recorded for ECM, Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and other labels, with his albums featuring a number of world-premiere recordings. An album of works by Dobrinka Tabakova for ECM was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium. His recording of solo violin music, with an innovative recording approach invented by Roman and dubbed “spatial orchestration,” was a CD of the week at WQXR Radio New York and on the annual wish list of Fanfare magazine critics. The album of Leonid Desyatnikov’s music for violin and orchestra was nominated for an ICMA Award and received a Five Stars review for performance and recording from BBC Music Magazine. His album of Hindemith Sonatas with pianist Alexander Kobrin won a “Supersonic Award” from Pizzicato Magazine.
Roman has given world premieres of over a hundred works by Tabakova, Desyatnikov, Langer, Bennett, Irvine, Burrell, Filanovsky, Kourliandsky, Kurbatov, and many others.
In 1998, Roman Mints and oboist Dmitry Bulgakov founded the Homecoming Chamber Music Festival in Moscow, which has gained widespread recognition and a substantial following in Russia. The core of the Homecoming concert programmes consists of themed selections of works that share a powerful underlying idea, which may not necessarily be musical. Since the inception of the festival, Roman has authored more than 60 such programmes. In April 2002, Roman co-directed the Suppressed Music project in Russia, which comprised two concerts and a conference on composers whose music had been suppressed. A book and CD were released as a result of this project by the Klassika XXI Publishing House. Following the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Roman Mints declared the festival closed after 25 years since its inception.
Outside the classical field, Roman has worked with free-improvising saxophonist Paul Dunmall, vocalist Alisa Ten, the Brian Irvine Ensemble, Pokrovsky Ensemble, and the Russian IDM group EU. He has also participated in several theatre productions including Langer’s Ariadne and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. He has worked with theatre directors Vasily Barkhatov and Tim Hopkins, choreographers Alla Sigalova and Oleg Glushkov, and film director Alexander Zeldovich. His recording of the Mozetich Violin Concerto ‘Affairs of the Heart’ was used in productions by Hong Kong Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the Q-dance company.
After the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Roman moved back to the UK, where he is currently teaching at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He organized a number of projects in support of Ukraine, including a concert of Ukrainian music at the RAM in London.
In Summer 2024, Roman co-directed the Open Bar Chamber Music Festival in Montenegro.
Roman Mints began playing the violin at the age of five. In 1994 Roman won a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, and also studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, winning prizes at each.
His teachers were Larisa Svetlova, Natalya Fikhtengoltz and Felix Andrievsky. Roman Mints plays a Francesco Ruggieri violin, circa 1685.
