Four visiting teachers from the Magnificat Institute visited the Conservatory of Vicenza through the JERUS-IT-ARTS project. Though each followed a different path to music, their experiences shared a common thread of learning, renewal, and gratitude.

Jamil, born and raised in Jerusalem, grew up surrounded by music in a family of musicians and singers. He discovered the Magnificat Institute as a child, studied piano for ten years, and went on to earn his degree in Renaissance and Baroque singing through the agreement between the Conservatory of Vicenza and the Magnificat. Now training to become a choir conductor, he leads the Yasmeen Choir in Jerusalem. His four days studying choir conducting with Maestro Ezio Spinoccia left a deep mark: he came away with a clearer sense of the path ahead and called the experience unforgettable. For him the work also connected to a discovery within the project itself, the music archive of the Custody of the Holy Land, where a requiem written by Palestinian composer Augustin Lama after the 1948 war moved him as both a lament and a quiet act of hope.

Nadine Shaheen, a music teacher from the Old City of Jerusalem, conducts choirs and teaches music theory, having begun her own studies at the Magnificat at the age of ten before moving from piano to cello. She had visited Italy many times, and returning to the hall in Vicenza where she once recorded a CD with the Yasmeen Choir stirred old memories. Working at the Conservatory of Vicenza, she gained new techniques she intends to carry back to her three choirs and the children she teaches, blending the Italian vocal approach she observed with the Arabic music at the heart of her own tradition.

Yevgeni Markel, who has taught classical guitar at the Magnificat for nearly fifteen years, came to music through rock before falling in love with the classical instrument as a teenager.
Over the years his focus shifted from performing to teaching, which he sees as his greatest contribution, a way of shaping not only musicians but better people. Studying with Professors Stefano Viola and Riccardo Tamai, at the Conservatory of Vicenza, confirmed that he was on the right path while opening him to new ideas. He described himself as a tube that must stay open at both ends, always receiving in order to keep giving, and he was grateful for the chance to renew his methods like fresh water.

Tala Kawi, a twenty-five-year-old guitarist from Jerusalem now pursuing a master's at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, had long dreamed of studying in Italy. Through Professor Viola's lessons on guitar pedagogy, she encountered the methodologies she had lacked as a student and learned how to adapt the instrument to children of different ages. The experience taught her to tailor her teaching to each student's goals and to understand the deeper reasons behind every musical choice, drawing from many approaches to better serve those she teaches.

«It was very important for me to study art, especially since I live under occupation. This gave me greater determination to be an artist» (Hamada Al-Qabt)

A Day in the Life is an exhibition of young Palestinian artists living in Gaza or recently arrived in Europe: the everyday perspective of their gaze becomes a living testimony to an existence suspended between roots and distance, between memory and the present. The project took place at BASE Milano, in Milan, from 29 April to 6 May 2026. A Day in the Life is part of Grandi Sogni, an international project focusing on research, artistic production, and design, dedicated to the visual cultures and contemporary materials of Palestine. The project is organised by the Brera Academy of Fine Arts as part of JERUS-IT-ARTS. In this video, Palestinian artists from the exhibition A Day in the Life explain their artworks, which are closely connected to life in Gaza.

• Hamada Al-Qabt - “Sleep”: on blockade, surveilled people, the role of technology in helping the occupation.

• Adam Mghari - “Closed Now” and “Sleeping Elsewhere”: on the relationship with sleep and the need to live in the present.

• Yara Zahoud - “War Banquet” and “A Sky That Sees No Lights”: on the feeling of survival and the perception of being still in Gaza.

• Yasmine Aljarba - “Dark City”: on light and hope, the lack of electricity in Gaza, and the wait for it.

• Michel Jabareen - “Shu Shufet?”: on the division made by the occupation forces of Palestinians in cantons, fragmented spaces from each other.

• Adel Al-Taweel - “Cities in Your Features”: on remembering family and the relationship between past and present.

• Aya Ashour - “72 Hours”: on showing daily life as civilians under the genocide.

“Will music save the world? It’s a wonderful utopia! It is certainly a universal language that needs no translation.

A subtle language that also brings with it education and learning.” With these words of Riccardo Tamai, professor at the Arrigo Pedrollo Conservatory of Music in Vicenza, we present this video on the role of music and its language in the JERUS-IT-ARTS project.

Words from Stefano Lorenzetti (co-coordinator of the JERUS-IT-ARTS project and director of the Arrigo Pedrollo Conservatory of Music in Vicenza), Claudia Caffagni (professor at the Claudio Abbado Civic School of Music), Donatella Pieri (professor at the G. B. Martini Conservatory of Bologna), and Enzo Francesco Maria Spinoccia (Arrigo Pedrollo Conservatory of Music) are included.

The music is from “Percorsi dell’anima” by Lucia D’Anna (cello) and David Peroni (piano).

“The music is very different, but we found a way to harmonize them together.”

Yazan Fares, a student at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, has been playing the oud for many years and was involved in an exchange program with the Accademia Nazionale di Danza of Rome. A special thanks to Francesca Beatrice Vista and Renata Russo for the interview.