Roman Kovalik

Composer, Producer

Roman Kovalik’s diverse musical background - from concert pianist to multi instrumentalist for theatre, from classically trained composer to recording and touring metal guitar player – has formed a musical style, which has been described as “cutting edge” (Graham Ward, ex-drummer of Paul McCartney & Tom Jones), “powerful and continuous innovative” (Christophe Beck, Emmy Award Winner), ”rich on harmonic content and superb melodies” (Mark Kilian, film composer for Rendtion, Traitor, etc.) “a challenge to musical boundaries” (Andrew List, Doctor of Music Composition), and “musically mature” (Paul Hepker, film composer for Tsotsi and Ex Men). Roman Kovalik was born in Switzerland to Czech parents who immigrated from the Communists Regime after the Prague Spring in 1968. He discovered his passion for music early in his life following in his father's footsteps, taught himself to play the violin. Roman felt an urge to express his ideas beyond the limitations of just one melodic line. When he was 7 years old, he started to take private instructions and has stayed with the piano since. He composed his first piece "Hymn to the Past" on the piano at the age of eight (Recorded by Succubus in 1998). At the age of 13, Roman picked up the electric guitar and founded the trio punk band Sprengkoerper as lead singer/ guitarist with his friend, Roman Jorio. Roman Kovalik has written over 30 guitar pieces, handled promotion and booking and toured nationally for four years. In 1996, Roman also founded the melodic orchestral rock band Succubus with singer Philipp Gloor. With Succubus, Roman was able to express his creative ambitions in a larger musical vocabulary with classical instrumentation. Succubus toured all over Europe and played as a headline act at international Music Festivals until April 2003, at which point Roman decided to split up the band to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Besides those two bands, Roman has worked on lot of different projects such as writing the music for an annual theatre production (“Much Ado about Nothing” by Shakespeare in 1999, “Kabalen & Lieben” by T. Hugentobler in 2000, “Merlin” by T. Dorst in 2001). He composed a classical choir prelude for the Death-Metal Opus “Shining Bright Mourningside” and orchestrated/arranged the rest of the piece from former Messiah mastermind Remo Broggi. In addition, Roman was arranging popular songs into rock music for the party band Zersprengte Koerper. Since he came to Berklee College of Music in 2003 (dual major in Film Scoring and Music Business/ Management), Roman has earned a Certificate of Excellence in Composition, received the Berklee Achievement Scholarship, won several composition competitions - such as the Esterhazy String Quartett Competition, New Piano Compositions in 2005 and the Pop/Rock Show in 2004. He was on the Dean’s List several times - an award for excellent academic achievement. During his studies, Roman has continued his extra-curricular activities and has scored a movie (“Sick”, directed by Matt Sulivan), has written music and has done the sound design for two video games (“Asteroids” and "Chevalier", created by Russel Lowke) and has performed as pianist for an original band (Ashley Farrel Band) as well as with cover bands (Faith No More, Led Zeppelin) in and around Boston. After re-locating to Los Angeles in summer 2006, Roman worked as composer assistant on movies such as "Rendition", "Untraceable", "Traitor", "Direct Contact", "Before the Rains", "Shark of Venice" etc. and wrote additional music to "Day Break" (TV-Series, Paramount), "Feast II", and "Without the King". He also composed the full score to independent movies such as "Absence", "Bullet in the Brain", "Hard Feelings", "Echo Park" and "Katrina Frey's" and produced recordings for Danny Demure's "Dirty Trash", "Nakedstate", "The God" and a high impact rock/metal song collection for the music library "Source In Sync". Roman Kovalik is curently writing scores for several independent films and composes/ produces as ghostwriter for TV.