Juan-Salvador Carrasco enjoys a multifaceted career as a cellist, composer, and teacher. He is the cellist and co-founder of the groundbreaking classical band, Astral Mixtape; he has composed multiple chamber works for Salastina Music Society; he has written original soundtracks for award-winning short films in collaboration with Santa Monica College; and he recently has joined the cello section of New West Symphony. Juan-Salvador is also a passionate cello pedagogue - he teaches a private studio of cellists and is on faculty at Fried Music in Alhambra, CA. 

Juan-Salvador’s band, Astral Mixtape, collaboratively create and perform original compositions and arrangements using a unique line-up of two violins, cello, piano, synthesizer, and electronics. The band won the nationwide 2023 Astral Artists competition and the 2024 Beverly Hills National Auditions. 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.

From 2018-2020, Juan-Salvador was the cellist of the Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship. As part of 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 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. 

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. 

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.

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 original compositions have been performed in Salastina’s chamber music series and at the Heifetz Music Institute. 

Juan-Salvador has a M.M. and a G.C. from USC’s Thornton School of Music, and a B.M. from Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music. His past cello teachers include Ralph Kirshbaum, Hans Jorgen Jensen, Ron Leonard, and Eleonore Schoenfeld.