Throughout the week of January 14, 2018, Hanna Khoury, a violinist, and Hafez Javier Kotain, a percussionist visited The Hill School. The two musicians were invited by Yassine Benzinane, chair of the modern languages department, to work as Artists-in-Residence. They performed as featured musicians at the International Festival.

Khoury grew up Ma’alot-Tarshiha, a small village in Galilee, Israel. He was born into a very musical family – he has 40 first cousins who play musical instruments. Khoury learned the violin from a Russian Jewish teacher in Israel that taught him European concertos and musical literature related to the Western violin. As a result of having both Arabic and Western music backgrounds, Khoury is considered ‘bimusical’ with his fluency in both genres of music. Currently, Khoury is completing his PhD focusing on ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I study nationalism and popular culture,” Khoury said. “More specifically, I study how music impacts identity formation and social formation. Music has the ability to foster belonging and can be used to bring people together.”

Both Khoury and Kotain shared insight with the Hill School’s jazz band, orchestra, and choir. The groups learned unique musical pieces that contain both Western and Arabic elements, and performed the pieces at the International Festival.

“It was a really interesting experience,” Alyssa Acevero ’20, a trumpet player in the jazz band, said. “The song we learned had a lot of Arabic sounding melodies but the rhythm was very familiar and rock-sounding. Also, it was pretty cool that one of the musicians had made music for Shakira.”

Margaret Neiswender, the conductor of the jazz band and orchestra, said that the two visiting musicians encouraged the student musicians to play outside of their comfort zone, experimenting with heterophony, which is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line.

After a busy week of preparation, Hill students and faculty performed alongside the two featured musicians at the International Festival. The festival featured music from China, France, Spain and the Middle East.