Pharaoh's Daughter

Pharaoh's Daughter is a seven-piece New York City-based world music ensemble founded in 1995 by vocalist, cantor, and composer Basya Schechter. The ensemble merges Hasidic chants, Eastern European klezmer, Mizrachi, Sephardic folk-rock, and spiritual stylings with pan-Mediterranean, psychedelic, vanguard improvisation, and electronica adorned with woodwinds, reeds, various stringed instruments, and a wide variety of percussion. Daddy's Pockets, the group's self-released debut album, appeared in 1999. They signed with Knitting Factory Works, and in 2000 issued Out of the Reeds, followed by Exile in 2002. In 2004, John Zorn's Tzadik re-released Out of the Reeds alongside Schechter's solo album Queen's Dominion. The self-issued Haran appeared in 2007. In 2011 she followed with Songs of Wonder. 2014's acclaimed Dumiyah was produced by Jamshied Sharifi. Songs of Desire appeared in 2026, a lush, labor of love song cycle based on the biblical Song of Songs -- it was 18 years in the making. Schechter grew up in Brooklyn's Boro Park in a Hasidic community where she heard the music of religious nigguns including prayers chanted in unison during holiday liturgies. At home she sang harmonized shabbat songs while playing rhythms on gefilte fish jars and kiddush cups. During her late teens, Schechter left Hasidic orthodoxy after high school but maintained her love for traditional Jewish music. After high school, she briefly attended an orthodox girls' seminary in Jerusalem; she subsequently spent time in Egypt, where she was introduced to Arabic music and learned to tune her guitar to sound like an instrument that created a hybrid between an oud and a Turkish saz. While attending Barnard College during the early '90s, she founded Pharaoh's Daughter; the band's name referenced Schechter's given name, a Yiddish variant of the Biblical daughter of Pharaoh, Bithiah. They played several gigs of Jewish and other folk melodies in traditional and original songs. After college, she hitchhiked extensively through the Middle East and North Africa and learned to play instruments from the region like the darbuka and oud, with their minor-key harmonics and rhythms unfamiliar to the Western ear. She began to sing and compose in a style that resonated with Hasidic klezmer, Yiddish and Middle Eastern folk styles, and rock alongside other Jewish and world music. She returned to the U.S. and Pharaoh's Daughter. The band began writing and performing in earnest around the rich downtown klezmer and jazz scenes. The band recorded Daddy's Pockets, its 1999 Richard Julian-produced debut album, independently. The septet lineup included Schechter on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, cellist/vocalist Martha Colby, alternating electric guitarists Adam Levy and Benoir, Tracey Love-Wright on crumhorn, flute, and vocals, Jen Gilleran on tabla, and guests Michael Visceglia on bass and Zarifah on tamboura. The band's gigs became plentiful and were well attended. Schechter signed PD with Knitting Factory later that year, and in 2000, with an almost entirely different lineup, released Out of the Reeds. The expanded lineup included Colby, Oir, Love-Wright, Gilleran, reed/woodwind player and bagpiper Matt Darriau, producer Anthony Coleman on vocals, harmonium, and cymbals, trumpeter Avishai Cohen, and a wide range of alternating vocalists and guests. It delighted fans at gigs across New York. 2002 saw the issue of third album Exile from Knitting Factory Records. Produced by multi-instrumentalist Frederik Rubens who also appeared in various capacities, it offered an alternating, completely revolving lineup track to track, and included synth programing for the first time. Among the many musicians who appeared were violinist Jenny Scheinman, Coleman, Benoir, sitarist Neel Murgai, and many more. The meld of Middle Eastern and traditional Jewish sounds with a dark, indie pop sensibility resonated with listeners internationally, creating a wide variety of touring possibilities. Two years later Schechter released Queen's Dominion, her debut solo album for John Zorn's Tzadik label. Its lineup included two current members of the band: bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz and keyboardist Jason Lindner. Tzadik also licensed and re-released Out of the Reeds. The higher visibility allowed for more touring opportunities in North America, Eastern and Western Europe, Greece and the U.K. for the band and Schechter solo. Pharaoh's Daughter returned to recording with 2007's Haran as the first (and only) release by Schechter's OyHoo Records label. Produced by Rubens, it featured Schechter on oud and vocals, Blumenkranz playing bass, electric and acoustic guitars, Lindner on electric keyboards and piano, Uri Sharlin on accordion, Yuval Lion on drums, Daphna Mor on ney, recorder, and vocals, violinist Meg Okura, and percussionist Mathias Künzli. Critics greeted the album's release with global acclaim for its meld of thousand-year-old shabbat songs and canonical liturgical texts with psychedelic rock, Middle Eastern sounds, and R&B backbeats. In 2011, Schechter released the well received Songs of Wonder, her sophomore long player for Tzadik. The lineup included past and present members from PD as well as keyboardist Brian Marsalla, trumpeter Frank London, mandolin player Avi Avital, and others. Three years later, the band returned with fourth album Dumiyah for the Magenta Label Group. Critics praised the album's dreamy meditative quality, and lush, modern arrangements. Leonard Cohen celebrated the recording in interviews. Produced by Jamshied Sharifi (who also played keyboards, bass, and percussion), the studio lineup included trumpeter Stephen Bernstein, Levy on guitar, tubist Marcus Rojas, vocalist Shir Yaakov Feit, and percussionist Mauro Refosco. During this period, Schechter completed a program focusing on neo-Hasidic approaches to liturgical music and ritual leadership, and subsequently served for nearly a decade as a cantor and musical director at the Romemu communities in New York. She was ordained a cantor by ALEPH Cantorial School (affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement) and ordained as a hazzan (cantor) in January 2016. That year she also appeared with James Stone Goodman & the Epichorus on their L'Oud and the Abstract Truth. Pharaoh's Daughter performed but didn't record again for more than a decade. In the interim Schechter summered as cantor for the Fire Island Synagogue; she and banjo-playing rabbi Shaul Magid developed a localized musical tradition for setting Kabbalat Shabbat texts to Appalachian old-time music. They ultimately recorded the album Kabbalachia; it was released in 2024. In June 2026, Pharaoh's Daughter released Songs of Desire on Tzadik. Based on the Old Testament book Song of Songs, it was developed over 18 years. The recording traces artistic and personal evolutions shaped by cantorial and spiritual study, creative collaboration, motherhood (after years of fertility treatments), and an ever-deepening inquiry into the nature of love and desire. The basic tracks were cut with Sharifi in 2016, it wasn't until she began collaborating with producer Isaac DeBom in 2024 that the final charts and mixes took shape. PD's lineup on the date included Blumenkranz, Mor, Okura, Sharlin, Künzli, and drummer Yuval Lion, as well as many guest singers and instrumentalists. Songs of Desire was greeted with acclaim internationally and followed by a tour. ~ Thom Jurek