Remembered for his boundless curiosity, exceptional musicality and limitless kindness, Enzo La Hoz Calassara ’27 inspired those around him to pursue what they love and to connect with the world around them.
La Hoz Calassara was an artist in “every shape of the word,” according to his brother Luca La Hoz Calassara ’29. He painted, danced, composed music, wrote music and acted in theater. He was also an explorer who enjoyed learning new languages and meeting new people.
Enzo La Hoz Calassara, a cognitive science and music major from Coon Rapids, Minn., died on March 1 in the Cook Islands while participating in the linguistics department’s study abroad program in New Zealand. At Dartmouth, he performed with the Dartmouth Sings acapella group, the Handel Society choir, Glee Club and the Dartmouth College Gospel Choir. He served as the sparring captain of Club Taekwondo, conducted research as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and played drums and was the vocalist of the campus band Stratosphere, which he formed with friends.
Maria La Hoz, Enzo and Luca La Hoz Calassara’s mother, wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that Enzo La Hoz Calassara “was in the midst of an extraordinary adventure” in New Zealand.
“He was brilliant, curious and an avid learner, kind and always ready to uplift others — whether through a song, a poem, a sparring session or a quiet moment of support,” Maria La Hoz wrote.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, La Hoz added that Enzo La Hoz Calassara “loved to love” and described him as a “yes person.”
“Everything he could help, if he was able to do it, he will say, ‘Yes,’” she said. “If there is an opportunity to participate in something, to learn about something, [he] did it.”
Enzo La Hoz Calassara had a “genuine, unhurried love for other cultures.”
Enzo La Hoz Calassara was a first-generation American who came from a multilingual family. His mother, Maria La Hoz Castillo is from Lima, Peru, and his father, Alexandre Calassara Rodrigues is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Enzo La Hoz Calassara spoke Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Aslı Tavaslı ’27, La Hoz Calassara’s girlfriend, said she fell for his “genuine, unhurried love for other cultures.”
When Tavash and La Hoz Calassara first met, they “ended up in a corner talking about linguistics for four hours,” Tavash said.
“[We were] mapping out the languages we knew between us … tracing language families, comparing sounds,” Tavaslı wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth.
Naturally, the conversation came to music, and Tavaslı shared a few Turkish songs that she loved, including “Cambaz” and “İki Yabancı.”
Two days after their conversation, Tavaslı got sick, and La Hoz Calassara brought her a tea collection, a chocolate cupcake, soup and a bag of medicine.
“I didn’t notice it at first, but he had also brought something else: his guitar,” Tavaslı wrote. “It turns out, over the two days between our first conversation and that afternoon, Enzo had learned to play ‘İki Yabancı’ to surprise me. He had taught himself to pronounce the entire Turkish alphabet, memorized the lyrics and learned to sing the whole song.”
Tavaslı added that La Hoz Calassara “sounded like a native” even though he had only studied Turkish for 48 hours.
“[He was] thoughtful and caring enough to show up, attentive enough to remember one song I mentioned at two in the morning, creative enough to always be making something and lastly, ambitious and linguistically gifted enough to pick up a language from an entirely different family, from across the world, just because he was curious — and because he cared,” she said.
‘A star was born’: Enzo La Hoz Calassara loved music, film and the arts, and inspired others to do the same
Enzo La Hoz Calassara’s passion for music started early in his childhood. La Hoz, his mother, said that their family “always [had] music around” and that Enzo La Hoz Calassara took music classes from a very young age.
“He’s enjoyed music since then,” La Hoz said. “His voice — powerful, soulful and full of life — lifted spirits on every stage he graced.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Rachael Kroog, a family friend who directed musicals at the St. Joan of Arc church in Minneapolis, wrote that she met Enzo La Hoz Calassara when La Hoz Calassara approached her after a Christmas musical when he was about five or six years old.
“He spun around with his arms reaching to the sky and begged me to let him be in the musical next year,” Kroog wrote. “Enzo would be cast in every musical that I directed, and I recognized that a star was born.”
Joe Hagerty ’27, who became friends with Enzo La Hoz Calassara in their first-year writing class and later played bass for Stratosphere, wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth that Enzo La Hoz Calassara “handled his drumset and voice with a mastery unmatched on the campus.”
“Walking side by side with Enzo, a talent who inspired me beyond words, I had no choice but to not only accept the position of being his bassist, but to grow to become the best bassist I could be to support his music,” Hagerty wrote.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Lucia Hartray ’27, a member of the Sings, wrote that she will miss “hearing his voice in rehearsal, singing funky (slightly dissonant) harmonies in warmups and soaring in his solos.”
“Every note he sang was full of passion and emotion and purpose,” she wrote.
Enzo La Hoz Calassara’s musicality was not confined to the stage. NaamOon Wongratanaphisan ’27, who lived on his floor during their freshman year, often heard him singing, humming or playing a harmonica.
“I met Enzo’s voice before I ever met him,” Wongratanaphisan wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth. “Walking his bike along the basement of the Fayes during freshman year, it was a new tune every time.”
Tina Nguyen, a friend from Minnesota, said Enzo La Hoz Calassara “was never shy to voice his opinions, share his knowledge or even break out into song every now and then.”
“In group hangouts, he and our friend would burst into a spontaneous freestyle and beatbox, trading verses and switching off beats,” Nguyen said. “He was a performer that loved making people laugh and loved having fun while doing so.”
Nguyen added that Enzo La Hoz Calassara was “ambitious and adventurous and a risk-taker.”
“He’d always had this unbreakable confidence in himself, always sure that things would work out,” Nguyen said.
Angela Shang ’27, a friend who frequently ran into Enzo La Hoz Calassara in music spaces on campus, said he had “so much capacity and energy for all of the things that he encountered.”
“Even for just a normal rehearsal for an a cappella group, he transforms the energy in the room,” Shang said.
Yasmine Marrero ’27, a friend who worked with Enzo La Hoz Calassara at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, described him as “incredibly kind, incredibly smart, incredibly welcoming” and noted his passion for films and operas.
“He would always chat [films and operas] up with the patrons afterwards, which I found very admirable,” Marrero said. “...He does what he loves, does what he wants … out of passion for what he adores.”
He wove infectious artistry seamlessly into his academic work
La Hoz Calassara’s passion for music blended into his academics.
As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Enzo La Hoz Calassara researched the impact of music on the social lives of multilingual immigrants in the United States, according to his MMUF faculty advisor and comparative literature professor Michelle Warren. He hoped to expand access to English as a second language programs for immigrant families, according to Tavaslı.
He wanted to “weav[e] music into the curriculum of ESL programs so the courses could be joyful and family-inclusive, so that parents wouldn’t need childcare arrangements just to learn English,” Tavaslı wrote. “Music made the phrases stick, structure made the language accessible and the format meant families could have fun.”
“His cross-disciplinary creativity was truly unusual,” Warren wrote. “At our weekly meetings on campus, he was a warm and thoughtful contributor whose sense of community brought everyone together.”
Linguistics professor Laura McPherson, who taught and conducted research with Enzo La Hoz Calassara, wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that he planned to be an ethnomusicologist, a researcher of music as a social and cultural phenomenon.
“It would have fit him like a glove,” McPherson wrote. “Enzo was driven by curiosity and by connection — through music, through language and across divides of both.”
Enzo La Hoz Calassara helped McPherson analyze Beninese drum systems during the winter term in 2025. When she offered him the opportunity to accompany her on a 12-day research trip to Benin, he “jumped at the chance.”
“Enzo drank it in with exuberance; he didn’t want to miss a thing,” McPherson wrote. “Whether laughing with my collaborator Mahuton, showing off his drum skills to the delight of the musicians we were working with or being thrown into spiritual ceremonies none of us expected, he embraced the opportunity with openness, humility and enthusiasm.”
Vikram Chetnani ’28, who took MUS 23: “Timbre and Form” with Enzo La Hoz Calassara, wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that he had several memories from the small, intimate class.
“Enzo was our ‘glue’ in a way — he had this great energy that could fill a room and it really did bring us together each time our class met,” he wrote.
Enzo La Hoz Calassara’s grace and compassion were felt in all areas of campus
Enzo La Hoz Calassara loved martial arts, especially taekwondo. According to his parents, he started taekwondo in fifth grade and worked his way up to earn a black belt and compete in statewide competitions.
At Dartmouth, Enzo La Hoz Calassara helped lead the Club Taekwondo team as sparring captain and traveled to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Vermont for tournaments, according to Club Taekwondo senior captain Anne-Sarah Nichitiu ’26. Nichitiu wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that she “brought the ‘martial’ and [La Hoz Calassara] brought the ‘art’” into their team.
“For every side kick or roundhouse you’d throw, there was more than strength and power in [his] moves — there was grace,” she wrote.
Enzo La Hoz Calassara was also known around campus for his flat-tired bike, which he would “leave stranded across campus all the time,” according to his brother. Their father bought the snow bike for a quarter of the sticker price and made “a bunch of modifications” to the lights, little side mirrors, and mud covers before he and his family drove it up for Family Weekend in fall 2023.
“From that moment on, my brother has used that bike all the time,” Luca La Hoz Calassara said. “It’s a heavy bike … It is not an easy drive, but somehow he would pedal it to be able to go everywhere, anywhere and carry people on the back of the bike as well.”
Luca La Hoz Calassara added that “living and being so present in the moment, and finding ways to just bring life into every situation, no matter how monotonous or how sad” was “so intrinsic” to who his brother was.
“He was just always there for you however you needed it,” Luca La Hoz Calassara said.
Luca La Hoz Calassara said his brother “was always there” for his friends and loved ones if they “ever needed help.”
“He never left me behind,” Luca La Hoz Calassara added. “He was the first person so many of us turned to.”
Iris WeaverBell ’28 contributed to reporting. Yasmine Marrero ’27 writes for the news section of The Dartmouth. She was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
