The Brazilian-born recorder and cornetto player Rodrigo Calveyra won numerous international recorder competitions in Brazil at a very young age. At the age of 14 he played as a soloist with the symphony orchestra of his native town, Porto Alegre. In 1991, he was the first early music player to win a scholarship from the VITAE foundation to study the recorder and chamber music in Buenos Aires.
In 1996, he continued his studies under Conrad Steinmann at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, from which he graduated with an MA in the recorder in 2000. Simultaneously with his studies in Switzerland, he specialised in the recorder and medieval music at the Civica Scuola di Musica di Milano under Pedro Memelsdorff. In 2012, he graduated from the class of Frithjof Smith at the Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen with an MA in the cornetto. He is preparing a PhD in musicology at the University of the Sorbonne, Paris, on the diminutions of Silvestro Ganassi.
Rodrigo has played as a soloist with orchestras in Brazil, Switzerland, Italy, and many other countries. He has played in the most prestigious early music festivals in Europe and South America, and in the most important concerts halls in Europe. He is a regular member of the Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, directed by Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, and has been an assistant in opera productions in important opera houses in Europe.
He is the wind instrument leader of the I Gemelli ensemble, led by the tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, which has won important international prizes for its recordings, such the Diapason d’Or de l’Année. Among his dozens of recordings are those for Sony, Hamonia Mundi France, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Ambronay Editions, Ricercar, France Musique, Radio France, and Bayerische Rundfunk.
Rodrigo Calveyra is the artistic director of the Vilnius-based international early music ensemble Canto Fiorito, which since 2013 has performed in concerts and educational projects in more than 18 Lithuanian cities and towns, as well as at international festivals, such as the Stockholm Early Music Festival, Festival Musiq’3 in Brussels, the Namur Music Festival, the Brighton Early Music Festival, and Jeunesse in Vienna. Rodrigo created the International Kretinga Early Music Festival around Lithuania’s oldest church organ. Bringing together the most brilliant early music artists from all of Europe, the Festival has been the most prominent early music festival in Lithuania since 2017, and is one of the most important in the countries of northern Europe.
