Juan-Salvador Carrasco enjoys a multifaceted career as a cellist, composer, and teacher.
He is the cellist and co-founder of Astral Mixtape, a groundbreaking classical band that collaboratively creates original music and multi-genre arrangements. The band won the nationwide 2023 Astral Artists competition, and is currently on the Astral Artists roster. They have performed throughout the US and Canada, and have opened for Time For Three, Anne Akiko Meyers, and Orli Shaham as part of the Vancouver Symphony’s USA Music and Arts Festival.
In 2018-2020, Juan-Salvador was named a Los Angeles Orchestra Fellow. Through the fellowship, Juan-Salvador performed in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, mentored the young talents at ICYOLA (Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles), and studied with Ralph Kirshbaum at the University of Southern California. In July 2019, the four LA Orchestra Fellows performed Michael Abels’s Urban Legends, a concerto for string quartet and orchestra, in Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Juan-Salvador was awarded First Prize at USC Thornton’s 2019 Solo Bach Competition and has competed as a semi-finalist in the Nationwide Sphinx Competition.
Juan-Salvador has attended summer festivals such as the Banff Centre’s Evolution Classical Program, The Heifetz Chamber Music Seminar, Bowdoin Music Festival, London Master Classes (England), PyeongChang Music Festival (Korea), and the Perlman Music Program. Juan-Salvador joined the Heifetz Ensemble in Residence program in the spring of 2022.
He has performed chamber music with Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill (NY Phil principal clarinet), Philip Setzer (Emerson Quartet violinist), and Robert Chen (Chicago Symphony Concertmaster).
As a soloist, Juan-Salvador has performed the Schumann, Dvorak, Elgar, Haydn C Major, Saint-Saëns, and Vivaldi Double Cello Concertos with orchestras in both the U.S. and Mexico.
As a composer, Juan-Salvador has composed and performed the soundtracks for many award-winning short films, including Azizam, Leaving the Factory, Never Silly, and Retakes. His piece, Hyde Park, was recently performed by the musicians of Salastina in their 2023/2024 season.