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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