In January 2016, at a scholarships awarding ceremony held in the City's Convention Hall, attended by Mrs. Hedva Almog, Deputy and Substitute Mayor of Haifa; Mrs. Bracha Sela, Secretary General and and Substitute Chair of the Foundation's board;  and Mrs. Aviva Spigelstein, Foundation Director; scholarship recipients and their families. Haifa Arts Foundation awarded a scholarship to student Liat Leibel, a student of the Music Department's School of the Arts.

Jazz concert, advanced improvisation class, guided by Dr. Dan Cohen

The Music Department, in the School of the Arts, Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa, was established in 2001. Its first Chair (in the years 2001-2005) was Prof. Oded Zehavi. Prof. Eitan Steinberg (2006-2010) and Prof. Yuval Shaked (2011-2015) succeeded him. Since 2016, Dr. Avigail Wood has been leading the Department. As of the end of 2005, the Department of Music has been located – together with the Theater and Fine Arts Departments – in a modern and inspiring building: The Dr. Hecht Arts Center.

Curriculum

The program of study’s broad and diverse field of knowledge includes the following subject areas: western, Mediterranean, popular and jazz music; music and computer technologies; music composition and theory; music production; multimedia works and performance.

Aside from the regular study program, the Department of Music provides a variety of activities and events that offer numerous avenues for students to express and enhance their creative spirit in:

• Concert series (ethnic music; contemporary music; organ music)
• Special concerts (by guest artists featuring students and staff members)
• Collaborative performances with the Theater and Fine Arts Departments at the Dr. Hecht Arts Center
• Weekly Department seminar (guest lectures and workshops)
• Our modern, well equipped recording studio
• Our computer laboratory (sound processing, ear training, musical notation)
• The Open Stage and Active Intermission (student performances) series
• Educational tours (to opera performances, instrumental workshops, venues of diverse musical and cultural experiences)
• Our Composition Competition in memory of Itai Weiner
• A forum for presentation of outstanding personal projects, seminars, course assignments and musical works submitted by students
• Ensembles performing music of various genres and styles
• Mediterranean music ensemble
• Our choir

Performances and workshops given in various communities of people with special needs (in collaboration with the Haifa Council for Voluntarism and Hillel Organization)

The Department’s teachers are committed to providing each student with the requisite knowledge and skills for responsible and up-to-date creation and research, done within a multicultural environment, on the one hand, and an interdisciplinary environment, on the other. The Department of Music equips its students with the skills essential to musicians, musicologists, music educators and agents of musical culture in the 21^st century.

Piano master class with Vera Hsu. Photo: Raanan Kosovitz and Yuval Shaked

Students and ensembles concert. Photo: Abigail wood, Yuval Shaked.

Arab-Jewish Orchestra of the Music Department, conducted by Prof. Taiseer Elias, on tour in Madrid to mark 30 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and Spain 

Participants of the Jazz Improvisation course jamming at the Music Department's
end of the year concert, guided by Dan Cohen. Sonny Rollins - Tenor Madness: Sireen Elias – Piano, Nir Kaufman – classical guitar,
Jonathan Luria – bass guitar, Hanin Ayoub - drums

School of the Arts, University of Haifa

199 Abba Hushi Blvd., Haifa 3498838

Phone: 04-8288821 – Fax: 04-8249714

http://arts.haifa.ac.il 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/culture.haifa/

The Dr. Hecht Arts Center, Haifa University, general

The School of Arts was founded in 2012, bringing together three academic units: the Department of Fine Arts, the Department of Music, and the Department of Theater. The School offers studies at BA and MA level, and provides a point of theoretical and practical contact between diverse artistic fields and those working within them. Our students study one artistic discipline in depth and are at the same time exposed to expressive forms drawn from other disciplines.

Among the staff of the School of Arts are artists and researchers of the highest level, whose names are well known in Israel and the wider world. They teach with professionalism and sensitivity, training students to meet intellectual and aesthetic challenges, and encouraging them to follow their independent ideas and to actualize them.

Professor Sharon Poliakine (Fine Arts) served as the Head of the School of Arts during 2012-2015, and Professor Yuval Shaked (Music) currently serves in this position.

Around 380 students study in the departments of the School of Arts: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Circassians; veteran Israelis and new immigrants; secular and religious people; students from cities, rural settlements and kibbutzim; from the periphery and from the center of the country. In its daily life, the School of Arts is an exciting multicultural meeting point.

The departments are based in the Hecht Arts Centre, established in memory of Dr Reuben Hecht. A modern and inspiring building that was inaugurated in 2006, the Arts Centre is built into the sloping peak of Mt Carmel in an area of natural beauty, overlooking an impressive view of sea, mountains and valleys, and secular and sacred sites.

The School of Arts also promotes community engagement projects that envisage the arts as a means to intervene in wider society. Within this framework, students go out to work with socially excluded communities and in organizations that work with populations with special needs in Haifa and northern Israel. These projects enable students to gain experience and to take on responsibilities, and to find opportunities to create positive change in the society around them. They discover how art that is attentive, engaged and adventurous can promote important values such as responsibility, commitment, justice and solidarity.

http://arts.haifa.ac.il/index.php?lang=he 

School of the Arts, University of Haifa

199 Abba Hushi Blvd., Haifa 3498838

Phone: 04-8288821 – Fax: 04-8249714