What inspired you to begin studying music?

My maternal grandmother Dolores Rizzotto instilled the love of music in me. She and her family came from Latvia to Brazil as refugees when she was 13. She had wanted to be a concert pianist since she was a little girl in Liepāja, and her mother played the piano and her father the violin. I was introduced to music on their very own piano and violin, and inherited my great-grandmother's scores. My grandmother taught me and my younger siblings piano, and she was my musical mentor and advisor even after I entered the conservatory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), my hometown, from seventh grade all the way to the completion of a bachelor's degree in piano performance.

Her husband, my grandfather Francisco Walter, passed away when I was 18 and about to begin my sophomore year at the university. I offered to play his funeral at our church's pipe organ, despite having had no prior exposure to the organ. That turned out to be a transformative experience, as I felt a deeply inspiring transcendental connection to God through music as I had never felt before, so I decided that I wanted to become a church organist. I began organ lessons at the university just before I turned 19, while I continued to progress in my piano studies. My grandparents were such an important foundation to the formation of my musical identity that I adopted my mother's maiden name Rizzotto (which Brazilian children inherit from their mothers anyway) and named my firstborn son Walter in honor of my grandfather.

I should add, through listening to public radio and CDs I borrowed from my school library since middle school, I had also developed a great passion for music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods – particularly the music of Vivaldi, which to this day brings me deep emotion. The pipe organ is a most magnificent vehicule to bring this repertoire to life.

Music was also a personal solace to me, as I have struggled all my life with a medical condition that I rarely talk about specifically in connection to music, but which played a significant role in me dedicating myself to this art – namely gender dysphoria. The physical discomfort in my own skin since childhood could be transcended and temporarily alleviated by the disembodied physical self-expression through sound waves. Part of the discomfort was also connected to an erroneous assumption from my part, at the time, that I should feel guilt for experiencing a condition over which I had no choice – becoming a liturgical musician, offering my life to the Church and my musical gifts to the Lord, was thus also initially a motivating factor, as to this day I remain conscious of our finite life, and hopeful for what may come after we depart from this world.

I was blessed to become the organist at the magnificent Benedictine Abbey in Rio de Janeiro, built between 1590 and 1755 in the Mannerist style, with a unique 4-manual Brazilian-built pipe organ from 1773 and expanded in 1945. The music for all liturgies was Gregorian chant in Latin, sung by the monks and accompanied by the organ, as well as "the finest organ repertoire, especially Buxtehude whenever possible, and written preferably no later than 1900", as requested by Dom Matias, the leader of the schola and de facto music director at the monastery. His mentorship was instrumental for my inspiration and growth as an organist, as was the incredible environment provided by the breathtaking ornamented baroque architecture of the church and the perfect silence and peace of that cloister isolated from the world on top of that arborized hill. In that cloister I developed a love and admiration for the music of Buxtehude – and I can understand why Bach himself was also in awe of this great master.

Finally, I must mention that it is the teachers who love teaching who teach students to love learning. I am grateful for the inspiration of my music teachers and mentors in my formative years, especially Miriam Grosman (piano, UFRJ), Alexandre Rachid (organ, UFRJ), Andrew Scanlon (organ, ECU), Mark Taggart (composition, ECU), and John Schwandt (organ, OU).

What motivates you musically today?

My motivation today comes in part from the drive to create beautiful melodies and moods that may elevate and transport the listener to a higher realm. It turns out I myself tend to enjoy the melodies I compose, and I sometimes say that these melodies deserve to exist in the world, I just have to release them from my interior.

In addition, making music as a church musician – organist, composer, but in the past decade also as a choir director – also means offering in praise a gift I was given by the Creator, and which I have developed in great part to praise this Creator, as a means to bring congregations into worship and prayer.

To this day, music is my consolation through the difficulties of life, and I have experienced turmoil in my personal life from several fronts in recent years. Only light can dispel darkness. I want to create beauty whenever I touch the keys or write notes on the paper – make this world more filled with warmth, comfort, gratitude, and love.

What do you draw on for inspiration as you begin a new composition?

The melody. Either a hymn tune I will play for an upcoming Sunday, or an original melody that may occur to me in a moment of peace, be it during freely improvising at the keyboard or during a shower – and I have interrupted countless showers to rush to save a fleeting melody that just sprung, before it vanishes from my mind (sometimes in connection to a hymn tune on which I have been reminiscing, if not for an all-original work). In those moments I feel like Archimedes: eureka!

What is your favorite piece of music (or one of the inevitable many) and why?

Since I was 13-14 years old, it has probably been most consistently Vivaldi's Cello Concerto in G Major, RV 415, particularly the Alla breve. More broadly, I can safely say that Vivaldi's many concerti for flute, cello, oboe, and lute, have always ranked among the highest on my list. They bring me overwhelming feelings of melancholy and saudade (a Portuguese word for an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for someone or something which is absent – a feeling which is characteristic of the Brazilian temperament). This personal connection to Vivaldi most certainly happened because of how many countless hours I spent listening to his concerti in my adolescence, a most critical moment of intense emotions and crucial brain and character development in the formation of the human person.

Others who have ranked among the highest contenders for first place throughout the years, sometimes being temporary favorites, have included the soundtrack of the Little Prince movie from 1974 (score by Frederick Loewe, orchestrated by Angela Morley), Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (another of my adolescence obsessions), the Kyrie from Palestrina's Missa Papæ Marcelli, Grieg's Morning Mood, and most recently a seventeenth-century English folk song called The Witty Western Lasse (to the tune The Beggar Boy).

What draws you to write music for the church, and how do you approach text and music for ensembles that are mostly music-loving amateurs?

As Paul Manz once said, "it is the church musician’s task to unleash the voice of praise which in music, through the graciousness of God, is inside all of us." I do not focus on technical difficulty when I compose for church musicians because I believe that in most cases simplicity is beauty, and as a minimalist, I see it as elegant too. I focus on creating melodies that each musician will enjoy playing, even when it all comes together in polyphony or even homophony. I am also driven by the rhythm; that may stem from my Brazilian roots. If the music is sung or is a chorale-prelude to a hymn, it should set the tone and reflect the message of the text. In the end, the most important aspect of sacred music is that it should help elevate the liturgy, the spirits, and it should inspire the musicians and worshippers to engage in praise.

What is one experience that you have had that wouldn’t have been available if you hadn’t been in the music world?

Being a musician is what allowed me to move from Brazil to the United States. Immigrating to this country is an ever more challenging thing to do. My mother had managed to move to Germany to work as a classical ballerina at the Stuttgart Ballet when she was younger, and this concept of a life dedicated to an art taking you across the world inspired my imagination since I was a child.

One evening in my junior year at the university, 2009, I stumbled upon a flyer describing an opportunity for an exchange semester in America for only two music students, sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. I will never forget that the deadline for application was that very midnight, as I was reading the flyer just before walking home. I had been studying English for years on my own, but it was my interest in the pipe organ which opened this unique door for me. I had no idea that I would be in the last class of students sent to America by that program, which was shut down by the end of that academic year. This remarkable window of opportunity was specific to four schools of music – two in America and two in Brazil. I just happened to be in one (UFRJ) and then to be offered a scholarship to East Carolina University.

I seized the opportunity to apply for a master's degree at ECU during that exchange semester in my junior year and that's what got me back to America after having returned to Brazil to graduate. I was blessed to follow that with a DMA at the American Organ Institute at the University of Oklahoma and then permanent residency and, 15 years after I first moved here, I finally became a citizen. My entire life-changing American experience has only been possible because I decided to become an organist when I was about to turn 19, and because of the tens of thousands of hours spent in the practice room.

What is a favorite hobby or interest outside of music?

I am happy to be outside taking care of our garden. Very unusually for where we live, our yard had no plants or trees when we moved in, despite the house being decades old, so I have been gifted a blank canvas to create a promising mini boreal forest. I love being outside caring for plants, and as a composer, this blank canvas is much like a blank sheet of music just waiting for the notes to fill it.

Other interests of mine include cooking; watching out for the aurora borealis, my favorite natural phenomenon, which we are blessed to experience with relative frequency here in Minnesota; learning languages (pardon my French, I’m working on it); and consistent resistance training at the gym.

But in all reality, and I saved the best for last, what you will find me most frequently engaged in these days is parenting, the most wonderfully transformative experience of my life, which does keep me busy and feeling very loved as the stay-at-home parent to my three young children.

I am grateful to Augsburg Fortress for publishing my music. I hope our relationship will continue to flourish for many years to come.

We are grateful for Kristina's work and the impact it has on the ministry we serve. To learn more about Kristina and her work, check out her website at www.kristinarizzotto.com and explore her releases through Augsburg Fortress here.