About Basya

Basya 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. 

Performing with some of the best downtown jazz and world music players, jam world, psychedelic sounds..Shanir Blumenkranz on Bass, Yuval Lion on drums Brian Marsella -  keys, Daphna Mor, winds, Meg Okura, violin, Mathias Kunzli on percussion.  Her performances broke out of the NYC scene only, and combined her love of traveling with her love of music, taking her concerts on the road, through Greece, Eastern Europe ,UK, ISrael, South America and all over the United States. 

The band explores traditional, while staying contemporary, the meditative yet ecstatic. Her musical journey began in her home in Boro Park in  a melodic cacophony of  singing shabbat songs in harmony while hammering out rhythm on gefilte fish jars and kiddush cups. After she left her ultra orthdodox background, she found herself searching and  hitchhiking through Israel, Africa and the Middle East. To mimic the incredible musical sounds she was hearing she began re-tuning her guitar to sound like a cross between Arabic oud and Turkish saz, which inspired harmonic minor melodies, and unfamiliar odd time grooves. A liminal expression  began to emerge over which she sang and composed in a style that resonated with hasidic klezmer,  folk, classic rock, worldbeat and other jewish music, yet was of a bigger world.  Pharaoh’s Daughter  has recorded five albums with her family of downtown NYC stand out musicians, as well as another  two albums  under her own name, Songs of Wonder, and Queen’s Dominion. Two  projects in collaboration including Darshan with hip hop artist Eprhyme. Some of her favorite venues included Central Park Summer Stage, Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, Joe’s Pub, The Stone,  Mercury Lounge and City Winery, and the dusty fork in the road between Columbia, Brazil and Peru called Letitia/Tabachinga.   PD has been featured on NPR’s PRI and they have been guests on John Shafer’s New Sounds numerous times… She has been recipient of numerous grants including NYSCA, American Composers Forum and Sparkplug.  Residencies at Blue Mountain Center and Rising Song Institute have nourished her growth. They are slowly finishing a new album called “Songs of Desire,” a collection of texts culled from “Song of Songs..”  - texts which investigate the story, the power and the mystery of love and desire.  After being ordained as a Hazzan in 2016 and while working at Romemu NYC  full time over nearly a decade she began seeding some collaborations on her “Wendesday - day off!”  and at the same time helping to pioneer its first satellite community in Brooklyn Romemu.  

After many years, these projects and collaborations are beginning to grow, two  with rapper Eden Pearlstein aka Eprhyme with DARSHAN  in an album called Raza released in 2017, and they are presently  working on a new project setting Nachman of Breslov teachings from Likutei Moharan to music and spoken rap - as well as steepening into Kabbalistic Kirtan chanting. Her  meditative musical mantra projects from wisdom quotes with Daniel Ori is called  “Songs to Live By..” -  She is also beginning to steep in a project with Avi Fox Rosen producing an album of yiddish poetry by Itzik Manger, and “Dreaming in Aramaic..” in collaboration with Zach Mayer  is inspired by Rabbi Kohenet Jill Hammer’s book on dreaming and will be a collection of lullabies from Zohar quotes to listen to before sleep to encourage meaningful dreaming. She is now half time at the incredible renewal community in  Romemu Brooklyn, re-awakening her creative journey. She is so excited to see what happens.. Please stay tuned for news, releases and projects and more.