Christian Ishimwe is a young gospel music producer, who is known for his work with several local gospel artistes. If you don’t already know, his most recent work is with Beauty For Ashes in their latest album, Renaissance.

Khrisau, as he is popularly known, is a producer at Fourth Man Records, and music director at The Prayer House Youth Ministry in Kicukiro. 

Last year, the buzzing producer Khrisau graduated with bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Mt. Kenya University, but is not about to abandon his dream passion.

Although he has an IT job at Africa New Life Ministries, the beat maker wears his musical heart immediately the day ends at his regular nine-to-five job.

"I leave work at 5pm and go straight to the studio and work till I’m tired,” he says.

As music director, his main brief is to coordinate The Prayer House’s music operations, both in practice and in live performances. "I also work with the other teams like production and lighting and all the behind the scenes crews,” he adds.

Before treading into production territories, Khrisau was putting in hard work and dedication into his craft to make his dreams a reality. Born to Pastor Gerald Kalimba, and Immaculee Mukamurenzi, a chorister, Khrisau started becoming interested in music at a very tender age.

"My mother introduced me to the keyboard. She bought me a keyboard when I was three years old, but I broke it because I wanted to know what was inside. She never got me into anything musical until I was seven or eight years, when our church (Jerusalem Church) acquired a new keyboard and I was interested. She found me someone to teach me. The man was around for about a month and he introduced me to music theory.”

By the age of nine, he was already playing the keyboard, and at eleven years, he was already trying his hand at music production.

In 2013, he was introduced to Beauty For Ashes Band by a friend, and the connection was instantaneous. At the time, the band was preparing for a youth conference,dubbed: Alive and Free.

"A friend called Fabien, who played guitar for Alive and Free, invited me to their rehearsal session. I went and luckily for me that day, the second piano player was not around, and Fabien told his colleagues that I could play and they said why not? That was actually the first time I saw a live set up. I liked it and started learning about sound, and setting up. After some time I started learning acoustic guitar, then the bass.”

Recently, Khrisau also dabbled into sound engineering, executing his first task at the Unstoppable Concert featuring Beauty For Ashes, and U.S gospel band Christafari in August last year. As a music producer, he mixed Beauty For Ashes’ latest album, Renaissance.

"For the last five years we’ve been together, all I know about him is that he is a very curious person, always reading something online, or finding some new course to learn,” Kavutse remarks of the producer.

Fourth Man Records

Khrisau came up with the idea for Fourth Man Records, which he describes as, "a gospel music label that is open to everyone, but mostly gospel musicians. It’s less of a business and more of giving back to the kingdom of God. We want to empower the gospel artists here so they can reach out to everyone not just their small communities.”

editorial@newtimesrwanda.com