Three Pioneer Stories
From the left: Firas Hassan, Haein Erin Lee, and Priscilla Vela
Photo by Histeria Producciones
For Firas Hassan, leaving his home in northwest Syria amid a raging civil war and coming to Berklee Valencia had an undeniable urgency to it. Back home, Hassan was a renowned specialist in Arabic percussion, and perhaps the only Syrian musician to hold performance diplomas in riq and darbuka—the main instruments in Arabic percussion. But the war that affected a huge number of Syrians seriously curtailed Hassan’s work as a university music professor and in-demand performer.
As a young man, he was largely self-taught because music academies in Syria expect traditional music to be learned by aural tradition. Seeking deeper musical knowledge on which to build a musical career, Hassan found a conservatory in nearby Lebanon that offered a methodical pedagogy in Arabic music, and enrolled. There, he received rigorous musical training in Western music history and harmony as well as Oriental music theory and scales. He also studied academic subjects in addition to piano, oud, and Arabic percussion. After completing the six-year curriculum in 2006, he returned to Syria and found that his hard-won academic credentials and performance skills put him in demand—even among some who originally scoffed at his educational plans.
Given Hassan’s musical literacy and well-rounded experience, offers to play with symphony orchestras, traditional ensembles, and even jazz bands poured in. After the war began in March 2011, however, his work dried up. “I played concerts throughout Europe and many other countries,” Hassan recalls, “But I always returned to Syria. My friends thought I was crazy for coming back, but I wanted to spend my life there.” After a year and a half without finding work in Syria, Hassan pondered moving to New York, but also applied to Berklee Valencia. When he was accepted as a contemporary studio performance major and offered a scholarship, Hassan opted for Valencia. Like his family members who had already moved from Syria to France, Hassan had reached a tipping point.
Once ensconced on the Valencia campus in September 2012, word of Hassan’s musicianship and the exotic nature of his talent spread among the students and faculty members. Everyone wanted to work with him. Faculty member Laura Karpman brought him in on sessions for a professional film project she was recording. And during the graduation concert in July, Hassan was featured in many different musical settings.
“Since I’ve been here, I have had chances to play flamenco as well as music from India, Iran, and Afghanistan,” he says. “I learned a lot about jazz and Latin music here and recorded many tunes with friends. It’s fun to play Western music and give it an Arabic flavor. I will always be an Arabic percussion player, but I learned a lot about other styles, and that enriches my own culture.”
As the Syrian war drags on, Hassan was handpicked for a fellowship at the Valencia campus that will last through the current academic year. He’s also working with a group of his countrymen playing pure Syrian music. “There is still a lot to learn,” he says. “I’m not thinking too hard about the future. If the war ends, I will return to Syria. Until then, I may teach and play in Europe. I’m just going to give my best to whatever I am doing.”
A Certain Kind of Craziness
Through her life experiences, Haein Erin Lee has gained an international perspective that few could match. The time she’s spent in Korea, Canada, and America figured prominently in her decision to pursue a master’s degree in global entertainment and music business in Valencia.
Born and raised in Seoul, Korean is Lee’s first language, but she’s completely fluent in English and Japanese, gets by in Spanish, and knows some Portuguese. Lee’s parents listened to Western pop, r&b, and jazz records at home in Seoul, and she began singing and playing the flute as a child. She spent her high school years in Canada, and then enrolled at the University of Toronto before completing her undergraduate studies at Berklee in Boston.
Lee formed a band in Toronto and was the main singer and directed the group’s business. She explored other facets of the music business by studying sound engineering at Trebas Institute in Toronto. When she got to Berklee, she majored in professional music. “My main focus then was performing, but I also took songwriting and music business courses,” Lee says. Working for two years at Berklee’s student label Jazz Revelation Records and behind the scenes at musical theater productions and the Panama Jazz Festival provided further rounding.
“After trying a lot of different things, I finally realized I had a real interest in music business,” says Lee. “My experiences with the Panama Jazz Festival and Jazz Revelation Records got me onto that path.” After receiving her undergraduate degree, Lee and her parents decided that she should pursue a master’s. “I trusted Berklee, and learning that the Valencia program would take just one year, I decided to enroll.”
Lee absorbed a lot in the classroom from teachers as well as fellow students. “Emilien Moyon’s economics class was great,” she says. “After learning the principles we’d have class discussions such as ‘Will Live Nation survive?’ and we would have to do research to back up our opinions with the economic theories we’d studied. I also learned a lot about different parts of the industry by listening to the presentations of other students.
“In a marketing class, David Loscos gave us a case study about Asian pop music penetrating Western markets. That got me more interested in the possibilities of K-pop music. This program helped me to narrow down what I want to do with my career.”
Lee completed an internship in Valencia with HallyuMotion, ironically, it’s a Spanish company involved in K-pop music. “I really wanted to see what the K-pop market was like in Spain and they needed someone to help them communicate with Korea. I learned so much and met a lot of K-pop fans at events. Interestingly, Spanish people rather than Asians initiate a lot of Asian events here.”
Lee plans to launch her business career in Korea in the K-Pop touring industry. “There are so many unexpected challenges when you work on live shows,” Lee explains. “But it’s a certain kind of craziness that I like. When the performance is over it feels so good that you want to do it again.”
Wide Open on the Low End
Growing up in Madrid, Spain, acoustic bassist Priscilla Vela showed an early aptitude for music. She was reading notes before she could read Spanish words. Vela experimented with several instruments before embracing the bass at age eight. “When I first tried the bass,” she says, “I thought, ‘Wow, I can feel the vibrations in my belly!’ So I chose the bass.”
Vela excelled at classical music at Spanish music academies and later at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Along the way she won numerous awards, and played with orchestras under the batons of some of the classical world’s top conductors. Yet, after years of performances with youth and professional orchestras, Vela longed for a different musical experience.
“I felt that I only understood a part of what music is,” she says. “When you work with an orchestra, you’re not playing your own music or creating. I’ve always been a creative person but I’d focused my creativity on painting, cooking, and decorating my house rather than on music.” A colleague from the orchestra started showing Vela the basics of jazz. She began improvising freely with her classical music vocabulary, and then started composing. Her interest in different musical experiences led her to apply and become accepted to Berklee Valencia with scholarship assistance from Fundación Conexus.
Vela says that working on the master’s degree has broadened her horizons and placed her on a different path than the one she began on years ago. “I am more of a performer than composer,” she says, “but I really like playing my own music. I have all these melodies in my imagination. I recognize what is classical, impressionistic, medieval, or minimalist, and try to play them with a new musical language.”
A second project Vela is working on is called Electrified Wood and is led by fellow graduate, guitarist Ousso Lotfy of Egypt, who is fluent in Arab music and American rock and jazz among other musical styles. Both groups have recorded CDs and are managed by grads from the global entertainment and music business major. The music of each is strikingly fresh and has gotten interest from promoters of music festivals in Europe and America for 2014.
“During this year at Berklee, we felt we could take risks and try things we might not normally do,” Vela comments. “It was an opportunity to really research different approaches. In the future, I hope to be collaborating with musicians, artists, photographers, and scientists—and animals too! I know that whatever I will be doing in 10 years probably doesn’t exist yet.”
