One early spring, Basya Schechter and Avi Fox Rosen met every Friday morning to compose together and some weeks later when the world was in full bloom, they had set a full experience of Itzik Manger’s tragicomic retellings of Bible stories to original music. Characters we know and love like Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah are plucked out of Canaan and set in inter war Eastern Europe. Hasidim, Turks, Egyptians, Poles, and Canaanites collide in the mythical geography Manger creates. The music weaves together a singer songwriter aesthetic with theater, pop, and world music influences, arranged with lush vocal harmonies throughout. Basya and Avi are joined by an ensemble of other leaders in New York’s vibrant new Jewish music scene: Yoshie Fruchter on bass and guitar and voice, Eleonore Weill on flutes and voice, Shai Wetzer on percussion and Kaia Berman Peters on accordion, voice and electronics. 

Co-produced by: 

CBE 

NJCF

Basya Schechter and Avi Fox-Rosen

Borscht Beat https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/

Basya Schecter is most widely and wildly  known for composing for her groundbreaking ensemble Pharaoh's Daughter, a 7 piece world music ensemble that  travels effortlessly through continents, key signatures, and languages with a genre-bending  swirling neo hasidic chanting sound. Basya Schechter’s  earthy, soulful  beautiful voice rings out over instruments that form a vibrant collage of East/West, old/new, Ashkenazi and Sephardic enlivened by flutes, electronica and strings. 

https://www.basya.com/

Avi Fox-Rosen is a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn, NY, equally at home in rock, Yiddish, klezmer, theater, or improvisational music worlds. He’s worked with many of the leading lights in new Yiddish music over the last 20 years including Adrienne Cooper and Daniel Kahn, and members of the Klezmatics.  Avi shreds as a member of .357 Lover, a mainstay of New York’s rock scene. He is a member of Yiddish Princess. New York Music Daily has heralded Avi’s work as “consistently excellent”.

https://www.avifoxrosen.org/

Borscht Beat is a multifaceted cultural project centered on Jewish music. As a record label, Borscht Beat has released many of the most innovative Jewish albums of recent memory, including work by Zoe Aqua, Frank London, and Michael Alpert. Borscht Beat is also a weekly FM radio show, a concert booking and promotion operation and a social media project. It is run by Aaron Bendich of Brooklyn.

https://borschtbeat.bandcamp.com/