Jazz Guitar Berklee

Born in Porto Alegre, South of Brazil, I was exposed to a strong mixed culture of music from Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. I started to play guitar in my childhood, at the age 13 and under influence by Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I took private lessons and few years later I started to teach in some music schools in Porto Alegre and by doing that I got involved in projects like guitar clinics, master classes and I also become a session player. Besides that, I was also studying music and I graduated in Music Performance and later on in Guitar & Technology, Music Pedagogy. I am also an orchestrator certified by Berklee USA.

For the 2018 opening celebration of the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice, Teri Lyne Carrington asked her students to select and perform songs from the famed jazz Real Book - a compilation of lead sheets or scores of jazz standards - written by women composers. When she released there was only one in the entire book, Carrington, a Grammy Award winning virtuoso jazz drummer, composer, inter-disciplinary artist, activist and educator, who has worked tirelessly over the last decade to advocate for inclusivity and raise the voice of women, trans and non-binary people in jazz, set out to shift the narrative.

At approximately 14, Ruslan discovered jazz, instantly showing imminent interest. By the age of 16, he was the "wunderkind" keyboardist for the then-popular Israeli jazz fusion band, "Confusion". With Confusion, he toured Israel and made several appearances at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.At 18, Ruslan auditioned for the Berklee College of Music, where he received full tuition scholarship, and moved to Boston in January 2000.

Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny is one of the most successful jazz musicians in the world. He is the only artist to win 20 Grammy Awards in 10 different categories. A consummate stylist and risk-taker, his musical signature melds a singular, euphoric sense of harmony with Afro-Latin and Brazilian sounds, rock, funk, global folk musics, and jazz. His 1976 debut, Bright Size Life, and the self-titled Pat Metheny Group two years later resonated with audiences and critics for its euphoric lyricism, dynamics, and rhythmic ideas.