By Nicola Orichuia
April 29, 2011
Roberta Gambarini’s May 13 show at Scullers Jazz Club is in some way a homecoming. Boston was in fact the city where the two-time Grammy Award nominee first moved to in 1998, when she received a scholarship from the New England Conservatory. Her stay wasn’t long, though, as she quickly moved from musical obscurity to jazz stardom. We asked her about her past, present and future:
─────
Can you tell us about how you came to the United States?
It was 1998 and I moved to Boston at the end of August, after receiving a scholarship at the New England Conservatory. But my stay was brief, because the school had signed me up for the national “Thelonius Monk” jazz competition in Washington D.C., which took place just after I arrived in the United States. I came in third place and was noticed by many in the business. I started working right away, and after several months of back and forth between Boston and New York I decided I needed to insert myself fully into the New York musical scene, leaving behind the scholarship.
