Pianist pushing hard to advance family legacy

Every time Christian Urizar plays a piano recital or Symphonic Wind Ensemble concert at Purdue University Fort Wayne, about 20 people in Guatemala stream the broadcast. The junior’s performances are also a hot topic on the family chat for days afterward.

Urizar is following in the family business, after all, likely raising its overall quality to new heights. He’s just taken a unique path to this career choice. The family members play as a group in church while he has played in some of Europe's great concert halls as a PFW student.

When his grandparents, parents, and other relatives practiced regularly to sing weekends in their church band, a very young Urizar would often jump in during rehearsal breaks to play with the instruments. Because the family needed one, he started as a drummer at age 7. After he began to like the piano more, his parents entered him into the Guatemalan National Conservatory of Music, but he dropped out after 2½ years to study physics and mathematics.  

There are other facets to the story. Urizar’s parents are both from Guatemala, but met and fell in love while living in Rhode Island where Christian and his brother, Daniel, were born. When Christian was 5 and Daniel, a current PFW business major, was 1, the family moved back to Guatemala. Christian didn’t know Spanish, and he also didn’t remember English when he returned to the United States in 2018 at age 21 to live with his grandparents, who had immigrated to Fort Wayne earlier in the year.

While working weekends at George’s International Grocery on Broadway, Urizar regained his English enough to enroll at PFW for the fall 2020 semester, but said he'd often write down unique college terminology to look up later. Though he could not read music and lacked most fundamentals, Urizar auditioned for the PFW School of Music online. Hamilton Tescarollo, professor of music and director of keyboard studies, convinced Urizar to pursue the bachelor's degree in music and an outside field option.

“He did not know how to use his body to produce a good tone on the piano and needed much guidance on how to approach his music,” Tescarollo said. “He has grown a great deal since then, and I am very proud of him for that.”

Sensing natural talent and more ability to find, Tescarollo demanded more from Urizar, who has always responded. Urizar is now double majoring in performance and music technology.

“I found a great piano teacher who has pushed me even more than I thought I could be,” Urizar said. “I’ve gotten really good because Dr. T has been pushing me. He has taught me so many things about discipline and figuring things out by yourself.”

Tescarollo said Urizar has a deep musical sensitivity and an ear for pianistic colors, which is exceptionally rare considering he was self-taught before arriving on campus. The hunger to constantly improve, Tescarollo said, comes from the music inside Urizar.

On his first day playing with the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Urizar was asked to sight read a piece chosen for a senior piano student. Because the music was so difficult, he was silent the entire rehearsal. Though he wanted to quit, Urizar’s family encouraged him to continue. By the next rehearsal, he was playing the part. Thanks to that persistence, he has performed in France, Italy, Switzerland, and many cities throughout the U.S.

Because of that hunger and being a perfectionist, Urizar said he’s only been satisfied with his performances a few times, feeling there’s always a part he should have played better. 

“I just want to be the best pianist I can be, and it feels like I can do anything,” Urizar said. “I saw all of these great pianists play, my peers who were seniors, and I wasn’t overwhelmed. I just thought my goal was to be better than that person. I had to be better and there was no excuse.”

He’s got to live up to the family example. Urizar’s grandfather still plays the piano, his grandmother sings, his dad plays the bass, and his mother and sister sing. Everyone plays the guitar enough to get by.

“My life is like a movie because so many good things have happened, but I’ve also put in a lot of hard work on it,” Urizar said. “So many good things have happened. I have all the tools I need to succeed, and I learned them here. Someone told me when I was going to start college that my life was going to change. I just didn’t know it was going to be this big.”