Cal Poly professor-emeritus Craig Russell is steeped in the music of Spain and the Hispano-American world, having published over 120 juried articles on eighteenth-century Hispanic studies, Mexican cathedral music, the California missions, and American popular culture. He authored 26 articles for the newest edition of The New Grove Dictionary and collaborated with Chanticleer on a DVD film and four compact disks, two of which received Gramophone award nominations. His scholarship (including four major books) has been published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, Prentice Hall, the University of Illinois Press, and several universities and publishing houses in Spain and Mexico.  In July, 2009, Oxford University Press released his highly-acclaimed book, From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions.  As a specialist in Spanish-American music of the eighteenth century, he frequently lectures and serves as a guest artist at international conferences and universities in Latin America, North America, and Europe. 

Craig's compositions are released on Naxos as part of the American Classics series and have been widely performed in Europe, Australia, and the USA—including concerts dedicated to his orchestral compositions in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Sydney Opera House, and Disney Hall in Los Angeles.
 
Craig is well known on California’s Central Coast as the co-host of In-Concert, a classically-oriented radio show on the local NPR affiliate KCBX—and occasionally he hosts their salsa show, Ritmo y Sabor.  A guitarist, he received his first stage experiences as a high-school rock-and-roller but later earned his bachelors and masters degrees as a guitar and lute major at the University of New Mexico under the tutelage of Cuban maestro Héctor A. García. He spent his summers in Spain, studying at the master classes of maestro Emilio Pujol. In recent years, Craig has devoted himself to historical performance on baroque guitar (a small, delicate instrument with 5 pairs of gut strings), playing solo recitals and improvising the basso continuo accompaniments in professional baroque orchestras and ensembles.