Tarra Guerra

New Zealand born, North Carolina raised musician Tarra Guerra is trained in Suzuki violin and guitar, with a long-time active teaching studio in the greater Fort Lauderdale and surrounding tri-county areas. Tarra conducts the Alpha Strings for the Florida Youth Orchestra and serves on the Board of that organization as the teacher representative. An active member of the board of the Suzuki Association of South Florida and the current Vice President, she is energetic in the organization of workshops, graduation recitals and other community events. She was Adjunct Professor of Guitar (and Violin when needed) at Nova Southeastern University prior to the Covid years, but now prefers to fill her Suzuki studio with wonderful people of all ages Like all of us, Tarra is extremely happy that the world of music is back in person, celebrating this with an active performance schedule of several live solo and ensemble classical concerts every year, along with performances with her students and their parents at the South Florida Bluegrass Association festivals or benefit performances for the whole studio in several venues.

As a child, Tarra studied classical guitar at the North Carolina School of the Arts with Jesus Silva, a protégé and student of Andres Segovia.  As a young teen in New Zealand, while studying with Belgian concert guitarist Emile Bibobi, Tarra won the Open category of the New Zealand National Guitar competition. When her son grew up and left home, she returned to college, gaining a Master of Music in classical guitar performance at Florida Atlantic University, minoring in violin and composition. While at FAU, she was concertmaster of the FAU Symphony, teacher of the early level Guitar Ensemble class, Head Orchestra Librarian, and wrote for and played in all concerts of the FAU Composition Studio.

Tarra Guerra performs classical music extensively in venues ranging from small groups to international festivals, both as a solo artist and in with several chamber ensembles including Synergies (piano/guitar duo), the Middle Earth Trio (Classical Guitar), and Diverse Duets (violin, viola and guitar in various combinations). The Miami Herald described her playing as “expert and sensitive”. Tarra can be seen playing in several editions of the Virtual Guitar Orchestra, which can be found on YouTube. Due to skills gained by necessity during the Covid lockdown, she now knows how to edit video, (a skill gained only because she loves her students so much), and has a youtube channel of her own which includes several genres of music made over many decades. She is currently working on a a Diverse Duet concert and a solo program of 21st Century Classical Guitar which includes some of her own compositions. She plans to perform the solo program in the summer of 2023 in several states and in Canada.

Tarra has completed extensive Suzuki training through the SAA, as seen here, as well as a great deal of teacher training from various other disciplines. She loves Waldorf schools, dancing, swimming, sailing, camping, fidding, composing, songwriting and singing. She loves her spouse, family, friends and students, and is overwhelmingly grateful to have the best job in the world.

For those interested, there was a decade-long segue into the world of science, as Tarra gained a Masters in chemistry from the University of Auckland while perfoming extensively as a traditional folk singer and bicycle touring the South Island, worked in New Jersey as a research chemist, then spent some years helping to manage a unique artists’ paint business in New York City’s East Village while puruing rock stardom, perfoming original rock or in every club in the city and in Seattle, with a few country performances in Nashville and Florida as well, then did some extensive teaching and tutoring of math, chemistry and physics at levels from middle school through college in New York then Florida and, of course, raising a beautiful child who wanted to play the violin. Her students know that she can be temporarilary diverted by gleefully straying into the world of mathematics while teaching music.

Having now left three serious careers in turn to focus completely on music, she is happy to have realized that playing and teaching music is the only lifework for her! Now Tarra brings an extensive folk, pop, country and rock background to her teaching and to her love of classical music, playing in several styles on both guitar and violin.

Tarra Guerra can be found on YouTube and Facebook under her name and under The Suzuki Jamboree, and on Facebook in the site Guerra Music, and the soon-to-be-active site, Suzuki Strings South Florida. Thank you