On February 27th, Belmont Hill welcomed Clarice Assad as part of the 2026 Kageyama-Hunt Speaker program. During her time, she delivered an impactful and playful rendition of her life story and integrated audience participation to engage and teach the students. She shared lessons she had learned in her career as a musician: singer-songwriter, composer, and a wide variety of instruments.
Born and raised in Brazil, Assad was introduced to music before she could even remember. Her father and uncle played guitar together for shows around the world. She reminisced about learning piano and singing, sharing with the community a video of her toddler self singing with her father, who was playing the guitar. She mentioned her initial shyness as a child and how music allowed her to express herself without needing face-to-face interaction.
She continued about her adult music career, focusing on her performances and creations. Aside from her accomplishments as a music artist, Assad has dedicated much time to teaching others about music, developing her own musical language, using shapes to convey different sounds and synchopations. One key theme and lesson she emphasized learning throughout her career was improvisation, and she encouraged all to indulge.
During her talk, she invited the audience to join her in singing along, guided by her teaching technique. “The chapel was a very interesting experience,” Nick MacCormack ’28 recalled, “not many times do you get to participate or even talk yourself during the chapel talks. It was a pleasant change.” Later, she called the B-flats onto the stage to improvise a song as a group. Following her lead, the Flats split into four unique parts, serving as an accompaniment as she improvised a melody, manipulating her voice to sound like an instrument. She controlled volume simply with her hands, incredibly controlling a couple of dozen voices like a radio.
