The Chatham Arts Council is investing in artists through our Meet This Artist series, introducing you to Chatham County artists each year in a big way. So, take a look. Meet your very inspiring neighbor.
Guest writer Corbie Hill penned this Meet This Artist feature. Corbie is a writer, musician, runner, and Star Trek superfan who lives in Pittsboro. Listen to Corbie’s music here, and find him on Instagram here.
Our Meet This Artist feature is made possible with support from the team at VRC, Ltd.
South of downtown Pittsboro and a short walk from George Moses Horton Middle School a studio is coming together.
On the floor, blue tape shows where instrument lesson room dividers will go. Sound paneling waits to be hung on the walls. There are two electric pianos and one electric drum kit. In the closet rest two guitars in their cases. It’s early January, weeks before the Chatham Studio for Music and Performing Arts’ anticipated January 26 opening, and Bryan DeCristofaro is hard at work bringing his and his wife Brittany’s dream to reality.
“We wanted to provide easy access to music lessons for students or adults,” he says.
The county is growing, the Chatham-raised DeCristofaro explains, yet many music students still have to travel to Wake or Orange County if they want to improve their playing. Bryan and Brittany DeCristofaro’s goal: an accessible local institution that’s findable by anyone, that shows up in Google results, for people seeking music lessons. Between Brittany—a vocalist and pianist—and Bryan—a career percussionist and county schools band director who can teach most any instrument—and whichever staff the couple hires, Chatham Studio is positioned to offer lessons in a wide range of instruments.
“Having to drive out to Chapel Hill or Cary, it’s a time commitment for west Chatham,” Bryan DeCristofaro says. “Our goal was in hoping to impact Chatham in a positive way in the music scene.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
There’s a special relationship that a student has with their music teacher. When you think back to yourself at that age, are there any music teachers that planted that spark?
My very first music teacher, his name was Frank. I don’t remember his last name. He taught out in Chapel Hill. I played the drum set, and he taught me in such a way that everything just made sense and ignited my love for playing. I had another one after that. His name was Brock. Again, I don’t remember the last name, but he was Pittsboro-based. I’ve always had really good educators that have pushed me to be good at what I do.
How old would you have been?
I started taking my first drum set lessons when I was in fourth grade. My second teacher would have been around middle school—I think around sixth grade.
When I was that age, sports was always the big thing. I always wanted to be an NBA player. Not a lot of people did music to the capacity that I did growing up in school. It was kind of this cool, unique thing that was personal to me. And I was good at. Other people knew that I was very musically inclined.
In middle school, I quickly realized that with the lack of height genes in my family, the NBA was probably not going to be the probable outcome. I put everything into the music field from that point on. I was the—whatever the superlative is in high school—”most musical” That was just my thing. Everybody knew that that was my thing.
And you went to Jordan Matthews High School?
I did. I’m from the Silk Hope area. I’m currently living in North Chatham.
You and Brittany have been active on the worship team at your church. Growing up, was church music influential?
That became more influential in my college years and beyond. I got exposed to playing bass in a gospel choir in college. That kind of ignited my love for performing in that capacity. After we got married and we settled back into Chatham County, we joined our church. We immediately knew that we both wanted to be serving on the worship team. Ironically enough, at the time, the worship leader was also an alum of our college, Gardner-Webb.
It got me back into playing. After college, I spent most of my time learning how to teach. I stopped the performing aspect.
Photo by Amy Stern.You’ve mentioned being a percussionist and playing bass with the worship team. How many instruments do you play?
So, I’m a percussionist by trade. And I learned guitar in high school. That was two instruments before college, and then I went to school to be a music educator. Through college I started learning some of the wind instruments. Bass became my secondary instrument. In the music classroom, I was teaching other students how to play wind instruments. I started to learn enough on each of them to be able to teach someone how to be successful on them. No exact number.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you understand the principles of enough instruments to where, within that family, you can probably pick it up.
That’s exactly right.
In your years directing bands in Chatham, can you tell me about how you noticed the gap that your studio aims to fill?
I mostly noticed it as I was teaching at Chatham Middle. There’s just a lack of access in that part of the county, based off of where it is. It’s in the middle of everything: 45 minutes to Greensboro, 45 minutes to Apex and Cary, 45 minutes to an hour to Raleigh and Durham, 45 minutes to Sanford, 45 minutes to Asheboro. It’s just far enough that we have students that don’t want to travel that far to get access, or maybe don’t have the capacity to travel that far to get access.
I would spend a lot of my time giving free lessons after school to students that wanted more enrichment. I would do afterschool small ensembles every day of the week. I would host morning practices. My students desperately wanted to do more. They wanted to be successful at their instruments beyond just the classroom setting. I was like, it would be great if I could send my students someplace close by where they could receive additional lessons, and then have them bring it back into our band to make our band better.
Before we left to go to Arizona (for Brittany to pursue a DMA in vocal performance and pedagogy from Arizona State), Brittany and I had our own independent, private studios. We just noticed there are people in this area that want to learn music, that maybe have never done music before. I’ve taught adults that just wanted to do it as a hobby and learn music as an extra fun thing to do in their life.
Once we moved back, I spent the first year—last year—really focusing on my main role, and my wife started to do lessons again. It’s slowly started to snowball. She’s now at capacity, and we have a waitlist. It prompted us to think more outside the box: how can we continue to provide more service to our Chatham County area in terms of providing music lessons?
We hope to be opening our doors soon. We’re in the process of hiring employees to work alongside us and be able to offer more availability to satisfy our waitlisted people.
Most teaching is being done by my wife. I’ve been her supporter. I take care of a lot of the dirty work, the building of things and equipment and the back-end stuff that nobody really sees.
What does Brittany teach?
She’s primarily a vocalist. She also teaches beginner piano.
What are you picturing in terms of Chatham Studio being a community hub?
We want a place where we can bring in community artists and give things like master classes or sessions or run a short workshop. Artists can talk to students about what it’s like to be in the industry, maybe do a production course with all the modern music making techniques.
Those are our long-term visions. We want to be able to give our students performing opportunities by partnering with local organizations or local businesses to provide an opportunity for our students to display what they know to the public and family, friends and the like.
Did you and Brittany meet through music? I have to ask, because it seems implied.
We did. We met as undergrads at Gardner-Webb University. We were both in the music department. I was a year ahead of her. The year that she came in, I was immediately just struck. I knew that I wanted to know her.
It was music that bonded us together, almost by default, because we were just constantly crossing paths. We turned into very good friends, and then into a relationship, and eventually marriage and two kids. But yes, music is what brought us together.
Do you make music together at the house?
We don’t do as much as we should. We were actually just talking about how we wanted to have more music in our house, mostly for our girls. We started implementing in the new year, doing a weekly jam session. It’s what we want to bring to our family this year.
Is there anything I haven’t asked about?
We’re just excited that we’re going to be opening our doors very soon. We hope that this becomes a staple to our county. I grew up here, and I have a very deep sentiment for Chatham County as my home. I love the arts and I want nothing more than to see the arts thrive in and outside of schools. I’m very blessed that I get to work in a field that gives me purpose and gives me passion every single day. I’m lucky that I get to extend that beyond my nine-to-five. I get to continue to experience the joys of music making and music teaching.
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