Susan Robboy has been playing violin with the SDSO since 1980, but her ties with the organization go back much further. Her first important teacher, Russell Keeney, had been concertmaster before the Second World War. Her siblings and she also had a string quartet coached by August Berger, who had been principal viola. She has fond memories of attending Symphony concerts during the 1950s and 60s at Balboa (Ford) Bowl in Balboa Park. Students could sit down in the pit area for a fraction of the regular price.
Mrs. Robboy’s first orchestra training came from Daniel Lewis, who had been concertmaster and was Robert Shaw’s associate conductor here. Her brothers and she played in the Repertoire Study Orchestra, a youth string orchestra that Lewis founded, which met at Sherwood Hall in La Jolla and subsequently on the brand-new UCSD campus. She received a bachelor’s degree in piano from St. Olaf College and a master’s in violin from USC, where she studied with Eudice Shapiro. At USC, she also played in the concertmaster position under Mr. Lewis, who had by then become conductor there.
After graduate school, Mrs. Robboy free-lanced in Los Angeles recording studios, was a member of both the California Chamber Symphony under the remarkable Henri Temianka, and the Pasadena Symphony conducted by her old mentor Daniel Lewis, and she has performed with the Ojai Festival and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In 1987, she became principal second violin of the San Diego Opera Orchestra.
In the 1970s, her brother Paul Severtson was a member of the SDSO. And as a charter member of the SD Master Chorale, her mother had sung with the orchestra even before that. Now, her younger son, Joseph Hintz, often performs with the violin section, and she is married to SDSO cellist Ron Robboy.