HEGAZY sits down for a One On One Session at City Winery New York on January 19th, 2018. Watch the full Session here: https://youtu.be/MvLTPohMK7A For more info visit:
http://hegazyband.com Audio & Video by: Ehud Lazin
Setlist:
Alive
Here To Stay
What's Going On (Marvin Gaye)
HEGAZY is a New York-based duo made up of twin sisters Leila and Omnia Hegazy. After maintaining parallel careers as solo artists in seemingly opposite genres, Leila, a vocally-driven R&B singer and Omnia, a rebellious pop-rock artist, have combined their styles to create their own distinct sound. The results: soulful harmonies, playful keyboards, dirty guitars, and catchy pop melodies.
Born in San Diego, California to a Brooklyn-raised Italian mother and an Egyptian immigrant father, the twins grew up in Staten Island, New York. They wrote their first few songs together at 11 years old before going their separate ways for high school and college to explore their own musical and personal identities.
By her early 20s, Leila had already performed at several of New York’s most well known venues including SOBs and the legendary Apollo Theater. Her debut release, The Black and White EP, was recorded by Grammy-nominated producer Dr. Joseph Ferry, and followed by a full-length album called ‘Looking Glass’. In the meantime, she studied Studio Composition at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, where Regina Spektor, Mitski, and other renowned artists recorded their first records.
Meanwhile, Omnia attended the Clive Davis Institute at NYU Tisch and played her way through the Lower East Side’s indie music scene. She became the more politically outspoken of the two sisters, inspired by American folk artists of 1960’s and the revolutionary musicians of the ongoing Arab Spring at the time. She released two EPs independently and a fan-funded music video with unapologetically feminist themes, garnering press from prominent media outlets in both the US and the Middle East, including Fox News, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq Al Awsat.
The sisters reunited musically in 2012 when they began sharing an apartment after college. While writing songs in adjacent rooms, their sounds eventually began to meet in the middle, and with the careful prodding of those closest to them they began to collaborate. When their father passed away days before the start of 2016, Leila and Omnia came together for more than just emotional support, Within months, they had officially joined forces as HEGAZY.
The Hegazy sisters spend their first few years as a duo writing and honing their sound, all while performing at various NYC venues, including Rockwood Music Hall and the United Nations. They recorded their debut EP ‘Young’ in Summer of 2017 with Brooklyn-based arts collective Mason Jar Music. A soulful and gutsy testament to their experiences as Arab-American millennials – The ‘Young’ EP will be released on February 9th, 2018.
