Violinist Roberta Arruda was born in Brazil and began playing the violin when she was ten. She is an experienced chamber music player, having performed with Duo Erkel, Taos Chamber Music, at the Las Placitas Series, Albuquerque Soloists, Serenata of Santa Fe, Yjastros (Flamenco Company) among others, and is currently part of the core players that perform regularly at Church of Beethoven, in Albuquerque New Mexico. She earned a Bachelor of Music from Unicamp Brazil and completed a Master of Music in Performance from the University of New Mexico. She studied two years in Hungary at the prestigious Budapest Music Academy on a full-scholarship from Vitae and later with Rudolf Koerckert from the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Kunst in Germany. In New Mexico Roberta has played extensively as an orchestra musician, with Santa Fe Pro Musica, Opera Southwest and San Juan Symphony. She was part of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas in 2002 and 2003. As part of her assistantship at UNM she was concertmaster for the UNMSO for 2 years, performing important works such as Rimsy's "Sheherazade". In 2010 she won 5th chair in the 2nd Violin section with the Santa Fe Symphony. In 2008 she won an audition for a one year position with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra with which she continued to work as a substitute until December or 2011. Always searching for solo opportunities, Roberta has soloed with the UNM Symphony Orchestra as a Concerto Competition winner, with the Albuquerque Philharmonic, as well as with the Red Rock Ensemble in Gallup. She has appeared as a soloist with several orchestras in Brazil, such as the Sergipe Symphony Orchestra and the Experimental Repertoire Orchestra from Sao Paulo, as well as in Transsilvania, Romenia. Arruda is currently exploring baroque violin interpretation and has her private violin studio. In May of 2011 she received the SAA certificate for long-term training in the Suzuki method from the String Pedagogy Program at UNM, having taught in the UNM Lab School.
Future projects for 2011 include performing at the Albuquerque TED conference with a string quartet and joining the San Juan Symphony as concertmaster for one of their sets. She is also scheduled to play with oud-virtuoso Rahim Alhaj at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
