Bruce Roberts seemed destined to play the French horn: there is a family photograph of Bruce holding a horn--backwards--at age two. The son of a band director and a piano teacher, his fifth birthday present was a cornet, which he played until taking up the French horn at age eleven. A fourth-generation Californian, Bruce studied with George Cable of the San Diego Symphony. Under the tutelage of his father/high school band director, he also took up the tenor saxophone and performed with his high school jazz ensemble.

Later, his father convinced him that horn-playing was a nobler profession, and he left the sax at home upon enrolling at CSU Northridge, where his teachers were Fred Fox and Lawrence Christianson. While in college, he also performed with the American Youth Symphony under Mehli Mehta and the Los Angeles Debut Orchestra under Calvin Simmons. Later, he studied with Ralph Pyle at the California Institute of the Arts, where he met his future wife, flutist Jody Meese. In 1978 they ventured to Mexico City, where Bruce was a founding member of La Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México. They returned to the States in 1981, when he accepted a position with the Utah Symphony.

Inspired and encouraged by meeting then- Principal Horn A. David Krehbiel at the International Horn Symposium in 1987, Bruce auditioned for the Assistant Principal chair with the San Francisco Symphony, which he assumed in 1988; eight years later, he was awarded the position of Third Horn. He was Acting Associate Principal Horn from 1999 to 2008 and since then has returned to playing Third horn.

Bruce is a founding member of the Bay Brass and loves the challenges of presenting all brass concerts. He has been an adjunct professor of horn at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for over fifteen years. During the summer, he is a regular at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Throughout his career, he has been in demand as a recording artist, and can be heard on numerous soundtracks, including such cult classics as "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," "Ernest joins the Army" and "Mars Attacks."

He has recently taken up repairing and building horns and hopes to have his own signature model in the near future. Bruce enjoys hiking, biking, cooking, and spending time with his family, including his two grown children, Laurel and Mason.