Olesia Castuera, Music Director
Olesia Gordynsky Castuera is very excited to join Bella Musica’s long legacy of music-making! Originally born in Ukraine, she comes from a diverse musical background, which includes singing in Ukrainian, Russian and English regularly in the Philadelphia area with various choirs. There she studied Music Education at Eastern University with a concentration in voice. Along with many engagements as a soloist, she’s sung with the Mendelssohn Club Chorus in Philadelphia with conductor Paul Rardin and San Francisco Choral Artists with Magen Solomon in San Francisco. She is currently completing her M.M in Choral Conducting at Messiah University. Recently she’s worked with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra and Pacific Edge Voices. During the school year, she teaches choir and general music at Berkeley Unified School District in addition to teaching voice and piano privately. She enjoys exploring the great diversity of choral repertoire, especially works that are rooted in folk music.
Rebecca Hass, Accompanist
Rebecca Hass is an active collaborative pianist, performer, and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has extensive experience collaborating with classical performers, groups, and movement artists, such as Diablo Women’s Chorale, Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs, Opera on Tap SF.
Rebecca’s interests extend to many types of music, including jazz, classical, and pop, but her biggest passion is bringing joy to others through Brazilian music. Her compositions span a variety of topics, from samba grooves to crime-fighting manatees, which you can hear on her debut album of original compositions and arrangements in Brazilian styles, Florescer (Bloom), described as “a refreshing take on instrumental Brazilian-inspired music”. Recent collaborations include the Berkeley Choro Ensemble, multi-genre bassoonist Paul Hanson, and the Echo Chamber Orchestra. She was also a longtime member of the Minneapolis Brazilian percussion group Batucada do Norte, and a founding member of the Modern Spark Trio, a piano trio with diverse repertoire.
In addition, Rebecca is a creative coach who helps ambitious artists self-compassionately reduce overwhelm, so they have more energy to focus on their most important work. She also hosts the podcast Being a Whole Person, full of inspiration and tangible tips to help you self-compassionately grow your creative practice from a supportive foundation of wellness.
Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Music degree in piano with a concentration in art history and anthropology from Ithaca College, and is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music through MTNA.