Chris Crawford

Crawford is a music business entrepreneur and founder/president of A Cappella Records. His business background includes five years of internships for Apple, Inc in iTunes promotions and public relations. While double-majoring in music and business management economics at the University of California Santa Cruz, he founded and directed two of the four a cappella groups: Acquire A Cappella and the first all-female group, the HighTones. With Acquire, Crawford produced the top-selling a cappella single “I’m On A Boat (A Cappella)" and Acquirefest, the largest a cappella event on the campus. He spent two years on the board of directors at the Contemporary A Cappella Society (CASA) overseeing the monthly newsletter. Last year, Crawford won the 2010 business plan competition at UCSC for A Cappella Records. This year, he’s produced Awaken A Cappella’s “F**k You" and Stanford Mixed Company’s “The Edge of Glory".

Ryland Hale

Hale holds a Bachelors of Music degree from UCSC and has been featured as a principal cast member in several UCSC opera productions including The Magic Flute, The Consul, and The Marriage of Figaro.  He also served as Opera Manager of the UCSC Opera Department and worked as the Assistant to the Artistic Director of the famed Pacific BoyChoir Academy in Oakland. Hale balances his work with A Cappella Records with occasional performances with the San Francisco Lamplighters.

Jesse Avshalomov

Avshalomov is a serial entrepreneur, opera singer, SEO strategist, and founder of International Beer Day. His work in SEO has ranged from from engagements with local businesses, to startups, to larger companies like Clorox, Visa and Charles Schwab. As a cofounder of A Cappella Records, Jesse led the technology team, designing systems to simplify and automate repetitive processes, and helping develop the business plan that would win the UCSC Business Plan Competition in 2010.  Currently he serves as President of the A Cappella Records board.  Jesse also holds two degrees in Operatic Performance Practice from UC Santa Cruz, which, while not directly tech related, were immensely satisfying to pursue.

Sebastian Wolff

Sebastian “Seabass” Wolff is an entrepreneur, musician, designer, coder, videographer, and a wearer of many other hats. His diet consisting primarily of redbull enables him to work several other jobs on the side, while staying almost healthy.

Best known as a YouTube pianist of video game music covers, the musically-inclined fish found a cappella through Acquire A Cappella at UCSC, for which he also managed website and design. Sebastian currently oversees the technology and design sides of A Cappella Records, wrangles code, and ensures things look pretty.

In his spare time, he is learning Na’vi, Dothraki, and Sindarin.

Ross Morey

Ross Morey is a San Francisco Bay Area music teacher, offering instruction in voice and piano.

Ross has studied vocal performance and music pedagogy at UCLA and Notre Dame De Namur University (NDNU), and with instructors such as Lee Strawn and Chad Runyun, and holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Vocal Performance from NDNU.

Although classically trained, Ross has also developed extensive experience singing with and directing ensembles that perform contemporary styles of music.  An entrepreneur and leader in the contemporary a cappella movement, Ross is the founding Executive Director of the Los Angeles A Cappella Festival (LA/AF) and founding Director of Bruin Harmony, UCLA’s all-male vocal ensemble.  Since its inception, Bruin Harmony has appeared in David Fincher’s The Social Network (Warner Brothers) and won awards, including the UCLA Prytanean Alumnae Award for Best A Cappella Group in 2007 and 2010.

Ross has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Contemporary A Cappella Society (CASA) and a faculty member of the award-winning Ragazzi Boys Chorus, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier arts organizations for young musicians.

Ross is a member of the music faculty at the Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, and is also a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA).

Jesse Buddington

Raised a choir boy, Jesse Buddington has been involved in the a cappella world since high school, when he started a quartet aptly-named the Quartertones with ACR co-founder Ross Morey and two fellow choristers. Jesse received a degree in vocal performance from UC Santa Cruz, and now sings professionally throughout the bay area while attempting to balance his busy performing schedule with overseeing the internal systems at A Cappella Records, most importantly the company’s licensing and publishing operations. He also helps out with artist relations and is an occasional contributor to the A Cappella Records blog.

A specialist in early vocal music, Jesse appears regularly with the San Francisco Renaissance Voices and at Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco. He has also been a featured soloist on the Santa Cruz Bach Festival, with the UC Santa Cruz Concert Choir, and the Ragazzi Boys Chorus. He recently created the role of the Trojan Slave in the UCSC Theatre Department production of Mary Kay Gamel’s Orestes Terrorist (based on Eudipides’ Orestes). Jesse is a veteran of UCSC’s acclaimed Opera Program and has sung with the SF Opera, SF Symphony, Volti, the Russian National Orchestra, the Kirov Ballet, and the Smuin Ballet.

As a teacher, Jesse operates a private voice studio and works as a rehearsal assistant and voice teacher at the Ragazzi Boys Chorus. He co-founded an alumni ensemble, Ragazzi Continuo, with some of his fellow alumni (reuniting with ACR co-founder Ross Morey for the first time since high school), and currently serves as the groups Music Director. He also teaches workshops in vocal sight-reading, early vocal techniques, Tuvan throat singing, and vocal percussion. He is also a virtuoso kazoo player. Seriously.

Candice Leigh-Helfand

Candice is the Associate Editor of A Cappella Records, serving as chief contributor to the company blog, and editing other official written items. She has been with the company since 2009, and is thrilled to be along for the ride as it continually grows and becomes an increasingly integral part of the a cappella community.

By day, Candice works as a writer and editor (surprise) for CBS News, as well as session and freelance musician work in her limited spare time.

Presently, Candice sings with the award-winning Red States in New York City. During her time at Rutgers University, she sang with, and musically directed, Deep Treble. She was also a founder of ShockWave. Both groups have a tradition of live competition and recorded success.

Cy Serrano

Cy’s first encounter with a cappella was watching a Duwende concert in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2003. Unbeknownst to him at the time, it would be that singular event that served as the tipping point for his dive into “aca-nerd-dom.” A proud alumnus of the University of Southern California, Cy directed the campus’s only all-male a cappella group The Trojan Men. His current aca-roles include Creative Director for LA/AF, Graphic Artist for ACR and now Membership Program Manager for CASA. Outside of a cappella, Cy works for BetterWorks, one of Los Angeles’ fastest growing startups.