FACULTY


  • Founding Director

    Violinist Elizabeth Almond Crute Cunha enjoys an active career as a chamber musician, orchestra player, and music educator. As the winner of the Augusta Symphony’s Concerto Competition, she performed Haydn’s Violin Concerto in G Major with the Augusta Symphony. Elizabeth was a member of ARCO Chamber Orchestra and was involved in multiple performances and recordings of classical and contemporary music with the ensemble. She toured with ARCO in Italy, which included performing at the 2011 UNESCO Conference in Venice at Teatro La Fenice. In 2018 she was featured as a soloist with the Tidewater Intergenerational Orchestra and she also performed with the Molto Chamber Ensemble for the First Lady of the Republic of Haiti in New Orleans. As an orchestral musician, Elizabeth has performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Rapides Symphony Orchestra, Northern Neck Orchestra, Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra, Brevard Philharmonic, Augusta Symphony, Asheville Jazz Orchestra, North Georgia Chamber Orchestra, and Hendersonville Symphony Chamber Orchestra. In 2021, Elizabeth performed with Bell’Anima Productions in Recanto Maestro, Brazil. She has performed with popular artists including the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Sarah Brightman, and appeared in Showtime’s On Becoming a God in Central Florida. Elizabeth currently performs regularly for the Fever Events Candlelight Concerts series throughout New Orleans.

    A passionate music educator, Elizabeth is the Co-Director of the Crescent City String Academy, where she teaches private lessons, group classes, and chamber music, and is the founder and artistic director of the Crescent City String Camp & Festival. An advocate of Suzuki pedagogy, she has completed Suzuki teacher training and also places a special emphasis in her students’ curriculum for music from world cultures and under-represented composers at all levels of string music education, in addition to classical and traditional repertoire. It is her aim to instill a life-long love of music and intellectual curiosity in her students through developing a strong technical foundation while focusing on music as artistic expression. She has worked with the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra, the Louisiana Academy of Performing Arts, and as the Children’s Program Director and a chamber music coach with the Philadelphia International Music Festival. In addition to graduating from the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, Elizabeth also earned her BS in environmental engineering at UGA.

  • Founding Director

    Increasingly recognized as a versatile and passionate performer, Brazilian-born violinist Moises Bonella Cunha has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Brazil, Italy, Russia, and the United States. Moises has been featured as a soloist with major Brazilian symphonic and chamber orchestras, including Bahia Symphony Orchestra, Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra, and Theatro Sao Pedro Chamber Orchestra.

    Passionate about chamber music, Moises is Artistic Director of the Northern Neck Chamberfest, and a frequent artist at the Northern Neck Chamber Music Series in Virginia. He has also been a Festival Artist with the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans, collaborating with members of the Manhattan Chamber Players. At the invitation of renowned pianist Arnaldo Cohen, Moises Cunha performed a solo recital for a full audience at the prestigious Sala São Paulo in Brazil. Moises is a founding member of the Delachaise Ensemble, an innovative and genre-defying ensemble presenting concerts and educational outreach throughout the Gulf region.

    A devoted and passionate educator, Moises Cunha has given numerous masterclasses in the United States and Brazil, including Loyola University New Orleans, Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra, Xavier University of Louisiana, FUNDARTE, and Pelotas Federal University, and currently directs and teaches at the Crescent City String Academy and the Crescent City String Camp & Festival in New Orleans. He is a frequent Artist-in-Residence with Recanto Maestro Youth Orchestra in his native Brazil, where he presents masterclasses, and coaches chamber music and orchestra sectionals. In 2020, Moises was a guest artist at the Goiás Federal University International Music Festival, in its virtual format.

  • Catherine Matushek is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, where she started playing viola at age 8 through her public school. She moved to New Orleans in 2015, and became a full-time member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019. Catherine was previously a member of the Erie Philharmonic, Firelands Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra. She has also performed with the Canton, Mobile, Gulf Coast, and Pensacola Symphony Orchestras. Catherine completed her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey. She has received chamber music coaching from members of the Cavani, Cleveland, Juilliard, and Takács Quartets. She is also a member of the New Orleans-based Radio Bird Quartet, a non-traditional string quartet that performs original arrangements of pop and rock tunes. A committed educator, Catherine studied Suzuki pedagogy at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has taught at the Cleveland School of the Arts, the Sato Center for Suzuki Studies, as a teaching assistant at CIM, and for El Sistema-inspired programs in Cleveland and New Orleans. She currently teaches 20 private violin and viola students aged 5-17, and for the LPO Academy education program. Catherine lives in Gentilly with her husband, Michael, and their cats, Clover and Percy. She enjoys cooking, playing video games, practicing yoga, and fostering kittens for the Louisiana SPCA.

  • Having obtained a Master in Music Compostion at LSU School of Music, Luciano Correa has been working for the last 30 years as teacher, arranger, and classical music composer and has composed soundtracks for feature films, theatre plays, dance and circus, produced and recorded CDs. He also performed as cellist in projects of popular Brazilian music, Brazilian jazz, electronic music, classical music, opera, classic ballet and contemporary dance.

    In 2015 Luciano was selected to be a participant in the 2015 NYU / ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop Foundation, the Walden Creative Musicians Retreat, the Charlotte New Music Festival and the Atlantic Music Festival. His music was performed and recorded by the Wet Ink Ensemble, Great Noise Ensemble, AMF Contemporary Ensemble and in Brazil his music was played by Pan Ensemble and Luciano Correa Hybrid Ensemble.

    He was the first Brazilian to perform in the New York Night of the Living Cello and the New Directions Cello Festival where he performed concerts and presented workshops demonstrating the cello as both a rhythmic and harmonic instrument in Brazilian popular music styles like Maracatu, Baião and Samba. Luciano also has played as cellist in the ensembles of notable Brazilian composers such as Jocy de Oliveira, Marcos Lucas, and Luis Carlos Cseko.

    His performances in Brazil, US and Europe, always combined both classical and popular Brazilian music, and during his 2006 tour in Europe, critic Eduardo Chagas of website Jazz e Arredores, from Lisbon, Portugal, wrote: “Brazilian cellist Luciano Correa carefully crafted his sound to match the each contemporary composition played. An excellent improviser, his playing was subtle, delicate and attentive to minute details of the general sound environment. Correa was able to harness the power of improvisation: knowing how to listen and respond to the musical dialog of the moment.”