Culpo has earned degrees in composition from Boston University and The Juilliard School, where he studied amongst others with Milton Babbitt and David del Tredici.
Following his studies at Juilliard Mr. Culpo was personal assistant to Aaron Copland and an active Teaching Artist for the Lincoln Center Institute.
He also recorded his composition The Four Freedoms, based on the Norman Rockwell paintings, with a quartet featuring clarinetist Achille Succi, contrabassist Salvatore Maiore and trombonist Massimo Morganti.
His "After Midnight, Before Dawn" was praised by The Washington Post as "a strikingly vivid work that explores the elusive worlds of sleeping and dreaming, to hallucinogenic effect".
[2] In February 2012 Culpo was awarded the Clefworks composition prize and his Of Ground, or Air, or Ought- was premiered by the ETHEL quartet in Montgomery, Alabama.