Pharaoh's Daughter
The ensemble Pharaoh's Daughter, a 7 piece world music ensemble, created by Basya Schechter, 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.
Pharaoh’s Daughter has recorded six albums with a family of downtown NYC stand out musicians. Pharaoh's Daughter has toured Eastern and Western Europe, America, Greece, Israel, South America, United States, Canada and the UK. Some of her favorite NYC venues to perform have included Central Park SummerStage, Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, Mercury Lounge and City Winery. The ensemble has been featured on NPR’s PRI and they have been guests on John Shafer’s New Sounds numerous times.
“Pharaoh’s Daughter is one of the most original and exciting groups to have emerged from the new Jewish Music Movement.”
Ben Frandzel, Rhythm
Basya Schechter Unveils Songs of Desire
Acclaimed vocalist, composer, and bandleader Basya Schechter announces the release of
Songs of Desire (June 12, 2026, Tzadik) a profoundly intimate and long-gestating album
inspired by the ancient biblical poetry of the Song of Songs. Developed over nearly two
decades, the project traces an artistic and personal evolution shaped by spiritual study, creative
collaboration, motherhood, and an ever-deepening inquiry into the nature of love and desire...
...Songs of Desire is a meditation on the ancient and the immediate- an 18-year artistic journey
rooted in the poetry of the Song of Songs and brought to life through lived experience. It is a
work that embraces contradiction: sacred and sensual, structured and improvisational, intimate
and expansive.
Above all, it is an offering: an invitation into the beauty, complexity, and unfinished nature of love
itself.
The band consists of:
Basya Schecter oud, guitar, vocals, percussion
Daphna Mor flutes, shams, ney, vocals
Meg Okura violin
Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz bass, 12-string guitar
Yuval Lion drums Mathias Kunzli percussion
Uri Sharlin keys, piano, accordion
