{"id":3786,"date":"2017-02-01T13:53:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T18:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/?p=3786"},"modified":"2017-12-21T11:53:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T16:53:46","slug":"the-arts-importer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/2017\/02\/01\/the-arts-importer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arts Importer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Violinist brings orchestral music to the Middle East<\/h2>\n

By Jessica Ullian | Photos by Sam Wilson<\/h4>\n

In 2014, violinist Hannah Lawson accompanied her husband to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia<\/strong> looking for adventure\u2014and became her community\u2019s go-to source for arts, culture, and after-school entertainment. Private lessons for eager expatriate students led to a job opening at an international school, where most of the students are foreign nationals living in company compounds. There, Lawson created the region\u2019s first school string orchestra.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout half of our students grew up here or were born here, and their education only consisted of general music, so they\u2019re coming to orchestra with no biases, no gender standards\u2014the girls are playing double bass,\u201d says Lawson (\u201917), who is earning her master\u2019s in music education through CFA\u2019s online program. \u201cAs soon as the school year starts, I play the Jaws<\/em> theme for them, and you can see their eyes open up. They\u2019re so excited about something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson describes herself and her husband, Ian Celing, as \u201ctypical Midwestern\u201d types who initially accepted Celing\u2019s job offer with an oil company in Saudi Arabia so they could travel and pay off their student loans (the country has no expatriate income tax). They moved to Ras Tanura<\/a>, a compound for foreign employees on the Persian Gulf. Lawson hadn\u2019t anticipated how much free time she would have, and how few opportunities existed to fill it.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Hannah<\/p>\n

Hannah Lawson (’17) is an orchestra director for Saudi Arabia’s British Grammar School of Dhahran, where she has created a curriculum for 800 students from 43 countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have bars and movie theaters here, and it\u2019s hard for people to communicate between compounds\u2014it\u2019s a lot of word of mouth, kind of like before the age of internet,\u201d she says. The region\u2019s extreme heat\u2014not to mention the need to wear an abaya for trips outside her compound\u2014made finding new activities, or exploring the nearby cities, a challenge.<\/p>\n

The only violinist for miles, Lawson began giving private string lessons within her compound and searched online for jobs. She found an opening at the Dhahran British Grammar School<\/a>, an hour from her compound. The job interview marked the first time she\u2019d left the house without her husband\u2014women typically only travel with male family members\u2014and she had to take a taxi for the trip, since women aren\u2019t permitted to hold driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cOutside there was this huge, gloomy-looking gate, and then you enter and it\u2019s this gorgeous green lush land,\u201d Lawson says. \u201cWhen they asked about my background during the interview, I said that I was an orchestra director, and they said, \u2018That\u2019s wonderful! We\u2019ve always wanted one of those!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhen they asked about my background during the interview, I said that I was an orchestra director, and they said, \u2018That\u2019s wonderful! We\u2019ve always wanted one of those!\u2019\u201d\u2014Hannah Lawson (\u201917)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lawson quickly found that the school\u2019s needs dovetailed with her master\u2019s work: she was afforded near-total freedom to create a curriculum for nearly 800 students ages 3 to 17, with the stipulation that it had to be structured so another instructor could come in and continue the work when Lawson eventually leaves the country. The students, who come from 43 countries, were lured by her violin renditions of pop tunes, and signed on enthusiastically. There was one potential setback: the school didn\u2019t have adequate instruments for a string orchestra.<\/p>\n

Lawson\u2019s private students had been purchasing instruments online, but that wasn\u2019t practical for an order of 20 violins, 15 violas, and 4 cellos. Lawson and her colleagues discovered that the three local music shops were owned by the same person, so Lawson contacted him and explained her predicament. \u201cHe was so excited to help us,\u201d she says, and promptly connected her with a retailer in the United Kingdom. The items took five months to arrive, but now the school has everything it needs, including backup instruments and extra strings.<\/p>\n

The experience with the shop owner is emblematic of Lawson\u2019s life in Saudi Arabia: \u201ca completely wonderful, polite, and friendly experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Lawson\u2019s husband is on a month-to-month contract, so the couple is free to return to the US any time. They\u2019re in no hurry. Lawson\u2019s students are busy with everything from composing in the computer lab to after-school body percussion clubs. The school held its first all-campus arts festival in November 2016, and held the first all-school performance, which included string orchestra, in December 2016, where the students performed an arrangement of a Coca-Cola holiday advertisement. And while they occasionally miss life in the United States\u2014\u201csometimes I just want to go to Target by myself,\u201d she says, \u201cand wear a tank top\u201d\u2014Lawson says her teaching experience in Saudi Arabia is unlike any other she\u2019d find in the world. \u201cWe\u2019re in this small school in the Middle East, and have one of the coolest programs around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Violinist brings orchestral music to the Middle East By Jessica Ullian | Photos by Sam Wilson In 2014, violinist Hannah Lawson accompanied her husband to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia looking for adventure\u2014and became her community\u2019s go-to source for arts, culture, and after-school entertainment. Private lessons for eager expatriate students led to a job […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10779,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3786"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4477,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3786\/revisions\/4477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}