Bio

Natalia Duarte is a violist specialized in historical and modern viola. She holds a double major degree in viola performance and anthropology, and  master's degrees in modern viola, historical performance and instrumental pedagogy. 
She has collaborated with several historically informed orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe, such as Innsbrucker Festwochenorchester, Ensemble laBarocca di Milano, Academia Montis Regalis, Barokkbandið Brák, Orkester Nord, Ensemble Il Pegaso, Orchestra Gli Originali, Theresia Orchestra, Orquestra El Teatre Instrumental and others, performing with conductors Alessandro de Marchi, Enrico Onofri, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Philippe Herreweghe, Giovanni Antonini, Jana Semerádová, among others. She has recorded in different ensembles for labels such as Naxos, CPO, Lindoro and Da Vinci.
After her musical education in her birth country, at the youth programme of the University of Costa Rica and with the Swiss violinist Jan Dobrzelewski, she moved to the US, studying with Hong-Mei Xiao at the University of Arizona. She earned a double major in viola performance and anthropology (2012), and a master's in viola performance (2014). Then she moved to Spain to study modern viola with Jonathan Brown (Casals Quartet), and early music performance under the guidance of Emilio Moreno at ESMUC. Following her master's degree in early music performance (2017), she moved to Italy, where she studied with Gianni de Rosa (Civica Scuola in Milano), Stefano Marcocchi (Verona Conservatory), and earned a master's degree in instrumental pedagogy (2022) at the Conservatory of Padova with the tutelage of Fabrizio Scalabrin and Luciano Borin.
She has won several scholarships including a stage with Nordic Baroque Orchestra (2017), Academia Montis Regalis (2018, 2019), and BPYAP scholarship on Bach Cantatas (2019).
From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of Zaïre Ensemble, with whom she performed at the Utrecht Fringe Early Music Festival (2018), the “Victoria Eugenia” Theater in Donostia, and Fundación Caja Vital in Vitoria (Basque Country, Spain). With her string trio Looking Glass Ensemble she performed at the Festival Grandezze e Meraviglie (2018) in Modena, and for the Società del Quartetto di Milano (2019). In 2018 she founded Altus Ensemble, where she researches unedited original repertoire for viola duo, and with whom she performed at the XIX Festival Internacional de Música Barroca de Costa Rica. Her projects with Altus have been partially supported by the Mount Parnassus Foundation in Calgary, Canada. 
Since 2021 she has been part of Thaleia Ensemble, recording the group’s debut album for Lindoro label and presented at the Royal Palace in Madrid as part of the Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro (FIAS 2022). Finally, in 2023 she founded the ensemble ConsorTico in Iceland, an ensemble that explores rarely-performed European and Latin American repertoire that spans from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth centuries. ConsorTico  performed at the first edition of the Reykjavik Early Music Festival (2024).   
As a teacher, she has experience teaching violin, viola, chamber music and orchestra workshops, and ear training in different schools in Costa Rica, Italy and Spain.    