Early Years
A native of central Florida, Martha Munizzi was born into a Christian musical family. The daughter of evangelists, Martha and her twin sister Mary Alessi were born in Lakeland, Florida and grew up traveling and ministering through music with her family. She began performing at age 8, touring the country with her family in concerts and crusades around the United States and Canada.
Martha, Mary, and their older sister Marvelyne were born with their parents' talent for music and became a part of the traveling family group as kids. The family settled in Orlando, Florida when Mary and Martha were 12, so that the children could attend formal, public school.
At age 16, Mary, Martha and Marveline (age 18) helped form a praise and worship band at the urging of a church friend. That group evolved into Testament and became popular enough to travel around the state of Florida performing in churches and at conferences and other events.
One year after completing high school (1986), Martha married Dan Munizzi, who was a keyboard and bass player in the band Testament. In 1993 she and Dan became the music directors and founding members of a new, fledgling church in Orlando, Florida initially leading a congregation of 250 and a choir of about 30 people that eventually grew in 8 years into a 5000 member congregation and a 200 member music team. They remained there until 2001.
She led worship at Lakewood Church while Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff was on maternity leave.
Read more about this topic: Martha Munizzi
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)