Ronald Crutcher was born in Cincinnati and began studying the cello at the age of 15 with Professor Elizabeth Potteiger, a faculty member at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. At the age of 17 he won the Cincinnati Symphony Young Artist Competition. As a Woodrow Wilson and Ford Foundation Fellow, he studied at Yale University with the renowned cellist Aldo Parisot and was the first cellist to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale. The recipient of a coveted Fulbright Fellowship, Dr. Crutcher continued his studies in Germany with Siegfried Palm and Gerhard Mantel. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in March 1985.   

Dr. Crutcher is a former member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and several other orchestras.  He has performed numerous recitals in the United States, Europe, and South America, and has recorded for Austrian and German radio. For 37 years, he performed in the USA and Europe as a member of the Klemperer Trio, with Erika Klemperer, violin, and Gordon Back, piano.