Cello Lessons with Crystal

I've been teaching private lessons for over eight years and currently, I teach from my private studio in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland, CA and occasionally at students residences. I have a passion for teaching music to students of all kinds: beginning through advanced, including adult beginners. I perform and teach classical, experimental, and improvisational styles.

I believe that learning how to play music is more than a technical process of taming your instrument, but a way of exercising and developing thought patterns. Being able to solve rhythm and intonation problems requires a certain kind of thinking and self-awareness. I believe that these kinds of skills are helpful in many aspects of life. I find that having an awareness of sound opens the senses and encourages students to perceive more of every kind of interaction with information, not just musical ones.

Performing Karl Evangelist's music with Margaret Rei Scampavia Evangelista, Jordan Glenn and Cory Wright. Attending a female-identifying artist retreat, On Beauty, in Point Arena, CA with members and non-members of the CCA faculty. Music by Myra Melford for four improvisors (Myra, Jordan Glenn, Darren Johnston, and myself) and four members of the Berkeley Symphony.

Inner Movements is a collective of percussionists and string players celebrating the music of the 20th, 21st centuries and newly commissioned works. Realizing works of open instrumentation, Inner Movements aims to explores the sonorities expose by the combination of strings and percussion. The aleatoric nature of percussion overtones combined with complex string instrument resonance supports ambiguity, reinforcement, and envelop contrast. The juxtaposition of decaying sound sources combined with swelling tones creates a melding timbre of idiosyncratic instrumentation.

Crystal Pascucci began to play the cello when she was eight years old. She studied music performance as an undergraduate at SUNY Fredonia with cellists, Natasha Farny and Roman Mekinulov, and improvisational master, David Rudge, where she received a Bachelor’s of Music.

In 2008, Ms. Pasuccci began a graduate professional degree in cello performance at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford, studying with Mihai Tetel. During this time, she continued studying free improvisation and performance art with Robert Black, and graduated in December of 2009.

In April 2010, she co-founded a contemporary music ensemble, The Sophisticates. In August 2010, she began the New Music Cabaret concert series, featuring short performances in vignette style. The goal for the cabaret series is to provide a casual environment for an audience to experience theatrical 20th and 21st century works. Her work in chamber music continued, and in May 2011, she co-founded The Living Room Players, who specialized in standard repertoire.

Ms. Pascucci attended Mills College in 2011, studying cello with Joan Jeanrenaud and improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, and Zeena Parkins. She currently resides in Oakland, CA and is working as a composer, improviser, cellist and teacher.