A journey in advocacy and artistry
Christina “Chrissie” Placilla believes music education is about systemic change, accessibility, and community, not rigid perfectionism.
As Executive Director of Church Street School for Music and Art in Lower Manhattan, she brings this philosophy to arts administration daily.
Pioneering accessibility in the arts
Chrissie has been instrumental in creating offerings at CSSMA where she has developed inclusive rock band opportunities for students on the autism spectrum and with Jacobsen Syndrome, as well as expanding visual arts group classes to be more inclusive to serve students with special needs.
Previously, as Director of Education for New York City’s Harmony Program, Chrissie masterminded an expansion from 300 to over 3,000 students. She managed key partnerships with the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, bringing high-quality music education to a wider audience and preparing students for national news spots on NBC's Today show featuring Harmony Program Students working with Anthony McGill and CBS Evening News highlighting Harmony Program Students on the Music by Black Composers Project with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and composer/violinist Jessie Montgomery.
Stories that resonate
Based on Chrissie's lived experience as a musician, arts administrator, teacher, and single parent to a son with autism, her writing delves into the intricate worlds of classical music, high-friction somatic realism, neurodivergent advocacy, and neurological processing through music.
She crafts compelling narratives around strong artistic leaning protagonists often sidelined by society who eschew traditional literary conventions, such as:
Georgie—A fiercely protective arts administrator and professional violist anchoring her eleven-year-old autistic son in the heart of a demanding city. She balances the rigid precision of a life in music with the raw, somatic reality of single motherhood.
Joey—An eleven-year-old autistic boy who views the world with a beautiful, untamed innocence and sweetness that the city cannot disturb. Finding safety and connection through rhythms and visual art, he navigates his surroundings with a profound sensory intuition.
Nevaeh—A talented Afro-Caribbean harpist from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Raised by her devoted Granny, she navigates the intense world of high-level performance in an elite summer music festival as one of a select group of scholarship students chosen to change the face of Classical music in order to diversify the concert stage.
Chrissie's literary universe is grounded by music at every turn, with curated listening lists that follow the major developments of the narrative, providing a soundtrack to the text. Her own original recorded song "The Silver Wheel" integrated within her debut novel is highlighted as the final song to the book's audio playlist.
Music performance and media appearances
As a concert violist, Chrissie was an invited competitor at the prestigious Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and has performed throughout the US, Australia, and Spain. Her unique musical voice is backed through a 2007 Winston-Salem Forsyth Council Regional Artist Grant, sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) that funded her solo CD Remembrances from Home on the Centaur Record Label juxtaposed with her work as the violist on the multiplatinum punk rock album Oi to the World by the Vandals.
Expanding her current school's digital media footprint, she orchestrated an exclusive partnership with Sesame Workshop and Rivr Media, appearing as a lead on-camera personality for Cookie Monster's Bake Sale: Block Party with students from the school including her son, Gabriel.
Academic distinctions and publications
A double prize-winner of the National David Dalton Research Competition sponsored by the American Viola Society, Chrissie is widely published in peer-reviewed journals. Her musicology research excavates masterworks by underrepresented composers to dismantle traditional concert stage gatekeeping, while her pedagogy focus utilizes kinesthetic learning for advanced string playing and ensuring chamber music repertoire selection is always tailored exactly to an individual student’s level and musical development.
She is a former Full Professor, Orchestra Director, and Chair of the Faculty Senate at Winston-Salem State University, a Historically Black University. She has also served on the faculties of Salem College and North Carolina School of the Arts Summer Sessions.
Chrissie holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Colorado, Boulder, a Master of Music in Viola Performance from the University of Hartford, and a Bachelor of Music in Performance from California State University, Long Beach.