Author Biography


  Stella Castellucci, internationally known harpist, composer, teacher, lecturer, and author, is a native of Los Angeles, California. Music is a part of her family tradition and heritage. Her father, Louis Castellucci, was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and descended from a family of Italian symphonic bandmasters.

Miss Castellucci's early harp study was taken with Aida Mulieri Dagort, Joseph Quintile, and Maryjane Mayhew Barton. Her training with Alfred Kastner was completed with Ann Stockton following Kastner's death.

 Miss Castellucci reached the pinnacle of her profession as a jazz harpist and composer through multiple avenues, beginning in radio as a staff musician for the American Broadcasting Company in Hollywood when she was nineteen. After two years at ABC, Miss Castellucci entered an eight-year association with famed singer Peggy Lee, playing harp in the jazz sextets and quintets that backed Miss Lee on her tours throughout the United States.

Since 1974, Miss Castelucci's deep interest in conducting workshops in jazz harp has added a new dimension to her career. She has appeared as a guest lecturer and recitalist for schools of music at colleges and universities across the country. She was an invited soloist at the 1987 World Harp Congress in Vienna, and at the American Harp Society conferences of 1985 in Columbus, Ohio and 2000 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In summer 2001 she is on the jazz harp faculty of Susan Allen's Summer Harp Course at the California Institute of the Arts.

She has also been both instructor and performer at the Lyon & Healy Harp Fests in Michigan, Arizona and California. She maintains a schedule of coaching jazz harp and freelance performing.

For her arrangements of standard and contemporary songs and ballads, Miss Castellucci has been lauded by harpists everywhere. Many can be heard on her two CDs called Lights and Shadows Vol. 1 and Lights and Shadows Vol. 2. As well, she is co-author, with the late Verlye Mills Brilhart, of Rhythm for Harp, and wrote An Approach to Jazz and Popular Music for the Harp, both of which are used by students and professionals, concert artists and orchestral arrangers.



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