Berta Rojas

Position
Associate Professor
Affiliated Departments
Faculty Bio E-Mail
Telephone
617-747-6544

For media inquiries, please contact Media Relations

Career Highlights
  • Recorded album A Day and a Half with Paquito D'Rivera 
  • Performed and recorded with Antonio Bondeolli Pecci, best known as Toquinho, on Felicidade, which also featured Ivan Lins and Gilberto Gil
  • Recorded History of Tango with orchestra Camerata Bariloche
  • 2017, Felicidade (ON Music Recordings)
  • 2015, Historia del tango (History of Tango) (ON Music Recordings)
  • 2013, Salsa roja (ON Music Recordings)
  • 2012, Día y medio (A Day and a Half) (ON Music Recordings)
  • 2009, Terruño (ON Music Recordings)
  • Studied with Manuel Barrueco, Eduardo Fernández, Ray Chester, Julian Gray, Felipe Sosa, Violeta de Mestral, and Abel Carlevaro
  • Nominated for Latin Grammy Awards for History of Tango (Best Tango Album, 2015), Salsa roja (Best Classical Album, 2014), and A Day and a Half (Best Instrumental Album, 2012)
Awards
  • National Order of Merit “Don José Falcón" by the the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for her outstanding work on behalf of culture, 2017
  • Honorary Doctor of Music from Autonomous University of Encarnación and the Universidad Americana of Asunción, 2016
  • La Ordena Nacional al Mérito Comuneros by the Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay, 2015 
  • Embajadora Ilustre del Arte Musical distinction by the Paraguayan Senate, 2015
  • Tourism Ambassador for Paraguay​, 2004 to 2016 
  • Fellow of the Americas by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 1996
Education
  • M.M., Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
  • Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Institute
  • B.M., Escuela Universitaria de Música, Montevideo, Uruguay
In Their Own Words

"I am honored to be part of the largest and most stylistically diverse guitar department in the world as its first Latin-American classical guitar faculty member. A Berklee teacher once said that if you ask for a glass of water, the school will open a fire truck faucet and put it right in front of you. That's how intense this experience is. In a way, Berklee is a melting pot of what a student will find out there in the real world of music, and it prepares them to make a living and succeed at it."

"Berklee is all about creativity, diversity, and most of all, respect for the music that comes straight from the student's heart. Whether it is jazz, pop, or classical, the aim at Berklee is that the student will find his/her own personality as an artist and what is as unique to them as their fingerprints."

"I was always intrigued about why the classical guitarist was, in most cases, the person who remained quiet in a jam session, or why a jazz player wouldn't concentrate on dynamics, phrasing, or articulation as much as a classical player would. Or why is it that they both, classical and jazz players, commonly fail miserably when trying to play the simplest folk tune that Atahualpa Yupanqui could have blithely tossed out. At Berklee, I would like to work on the concept of a universal guitarist, able to navigate different styles while at the same time building his/her strengths as a classical artist."

"I am hoping my classical guitar students will come to have the musical resources to never have to be quiet, to always be deeply in touch with their strengths, feeling validated to embark on this creative process of finding their own voices and traverse with confidence any direction music takes them."

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