Grammy-nominated hitmaker RØMANS announces debut classical album Opus. 1
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Newsdesk
RØMANS (a.k.a. Sam Roman), the two-time Grammy-nominated and BRIT Award-winning songwriter and producer behind Lewis Capaldi's worldwide smash "Someone You Loved" and a multitude of global hits, has announced that his new solo project and debut classical album, Opus. 1, will be released August 28, 2026.
The tracks "Singularity" and "Ballon" are out now on all major digital platforms via 10K Projects / Atlantic Records. “Continuum” will be released on July 10. You can pre-save the album HERE.
RØMANS reimagines orchestral music for the modern attention span with Opus. 1. Raised on everything from The Beatles and Donny Hathaway to U.K. garage, drum and bass, and Romantic-era classical music, the genre-defying multi-instrumentalist blends the emotional immediacy and structure of contemporary songwriting with the scale and depth of cinematic orchestration.
Opus. 1 marks the latest evolution in RØMANS' illustrious career spanning over two decades, bringing his musical journey full circle. He landed his first record deal at 16 years old and later signed with Jay-Z at Roc Nation, where he released four solo EPs. RØMANS went on to become one of the most accomplished and influential songwriters and producers of his generation, penning songs recorded by some of the world's biggest artists, including Lewis Capaldi, Rihanna, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, Shaboozey, P!nk, Mary J. Blige, Disclosure, Labrinth and Billie Eilish, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Demi Lovato, among many others. His songs have cumulatively amassed tens of billions of streams.
Recorded between orchestral sessions at London’s legendary AIR Studios and in Budapest, the music moves fluidly between explosive release and delicate intimacy. Themes of longing, grief, awe, hope, and tension run throughout the work, reflecting RØMANS’ belief that it is one of the purest forms of communication, a kind of emotional code capable of expressing what words often cannot.
The classical works emerged from his personal grief after the loss of his father and growing disillusionment with the rise of generative AI in music. The closing aria, “Lyra,” is a tribute to his father. After years inside the traditional music industry, RØMANS was drawn toward a more personal form of expression and handwritten orchestral composition, which reignited an obsession with creating music that he hadn't felt since his youth, before it became his career. He wrote Opus. 1 primarily alone on an iPad using StaffPad, and approached composing almost like painting, treating each note as a brushstroke on a canvas.
At the center of Opus. 1 is a broader artistic mission: to bring orchestral and classical music into a new cultural context. Pairing deeply human compositions with forward-thinking visual technology and a contemporary sense of pacing, the project aims to introduce symphonic music to audiences who may have never felt connected to it.
RØMANS says, “As a pop songwriter, I’ve watched the average length of a song go from 3:30 to 2:30 in just my career. I knew the only way to convince a brand-new audience to love classical music the way I do was to treat it the same way I treat pop music, using the kind of song structure the modern ear is used to listening to.
“At the same time, it was imperative that I captured the magnitude of a human orchestra. To me, there is nothing like the sound created by 70 of the most gifted musicians playing instruments, some of which are hundreds of years old, in one of the greatest recording spaces in the world. There is a magic in the molecules being moved by all those people at the same time that can’t be replicated by anything else, whether real or artificial,” he says.
With “Singularity,” RØMANS begins Opus. 1 with a bang, capturing the sheer power of the medium in roughly three minutes. It is followed by the intimate piano solo, “Ballon,” the album’s only non-orchestral piece, a counterbalance that reveals one person playing alone can be equally moving.
RØMANS recently made his feature film scoring debut as the composer for critically acclaimed climate documentary Just Look Up, directed by Betsy Hershey and Emma Wall and executive produced by Adam McKay. Following its world premiere at CPH: DOX in March, the film made its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
