Rome’Music

Shoshana Jedwab is an award-winning Jewish educator, and primal percussionist. The Life Force moves through Shoshana as she passionately drums and sings in community. Shoshana Jedwab is also the Jewish Studies Coordinator at the A.J. Heschel Middle School. She taught Bible to Shir Yaakov, Romemu’s Music Director, when he was in the 8th grade. Shoshana delights in helping others experience the underlying unity and responsiveness of existence through music, play, ritual and rhythm. Shoshana Jedwab is the founding facilitator of the JCC drum circle and specializes in Jewishly themed drum circles. She also offers adults, teens, and children Jewish drumming prayer services that embody the energy and intention of the liturgy and the primal forces of nature that inspired the prayers.

Shoshana has been very blessed to perform with: Debbie Friedman, Kirtan Rabbi, Storahtelling, Chana Rothman, Rabbi Shefa Gold, Darshan, Taya Shere, Akiva Wharton, Peace of Heart Choir, and Arnie Davidson. She was the sole composer and musician for the theater production of A Song of Solomon, and is the sacred drummer and teacher for the Kohenet Institute, the Holy Drummers Institute and Nehirim. Shoshana Jedwab is also an emerging singer-songwriter of sacred melodies. Shoshana is channeling ancient Hebrew prophecy and prayer into world music, and celebrating the universal impulse to sing out one’s gratefulness and surrender into deeper consciousness. Her first solo project “I Remember” is taking shape (listen here). Shoshana is grateful to the Romemu community for playing/praying with her and helping her skills grow through practice. When she is not drumming, Shoshana can be found with her partner Rabbi Jill Hammer, chasing her young daughter, Raya Leela, through the sanctuary.

Chazan Basya Schechter was ordained January 2016 by ALEPH Cantorial School, and has been the recipient of numerous compositional and project grants from NY State Council of the Arts and the American Music Center.  She is also known for her group Pharaoh’s Daughter, a seven-piece neohasidic world music ensemble that travels effortlessly through continents, key signatures, and languages with a genre-bending sound.

Born to a family of professional musicians and NY Jewish lefty activists, instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, and recording artist Laura Wolfe has been singing and making music her entire life. Laura started singing professionally at the young age of five at Lake George Opera, where her mother Mimi Stern Wolfe was employed. Laura went on to study violin and guitar at Third Street Music School and performed with the Downtown Children’s Musical Theater. She attended LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts and Oberlin College for voice and original performance, and landed her first tour with the European Broadway Road Production of the musical “Hair”. Making a name for herself as a singer/songwriter Laura played the key NYC venues The Knitting Factory, Bitter End, and Joe’s Pub. She has sung yiddish songs for public school children and worked with yiddish theater veteran actor, writer and director Eleanor Reissa who directed Downtown Music Productions 2011 production of Harold Rome’s Pins and Needles. Following her calling to sing sacred music Laura has appeared at Carnegie Hall and Tribeca Performing Arts Center with Lavender Light Gospel Choir and soloed on their 2000 release “Light in the House”. In 2005 she independently released her first full length CD “SIREN”, produced with Grammy award winner Steve Addabbo (Suzanne Vega, Toshi Reagan, Shawn Colvin) which made the finals of NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and has been supported by College Radio Airplay on over 200 stations and 4 continents. After a 14 year chanting and meditation practice and offering sanskrit chants at yoga studios, centers, retreats and festivals with such western kirtan notables as WAH, Dave Stringer, Ananda Rasa, and Marfil Laskhmi Delgado, Laura Wolfe released “Mantra” in 2012, which highlights her gifts as a composer, violinist, harmonium player and vocalist. After playing violin with the Kirtan Rabbi for two years her longing to return to her Jewish musical roots was fulfilled when she joined the Romemu band. She is thrilled to be offering her talents in support of Romemu’s mission and looks forward to bringing her eternally bold voice and soulful violin playing to Jewish ecstatic prayer for many years to come.

Jackson is an Ordination Candidate at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. He grew up at Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, CA where he cultivated a love of Judaism, embolden with music, spirituality and justice. He served as Rosh Shira/Rosh Tefillah at URJ Camp Newman in Santa Rosa, CA for several years as well as the Musical Director at Asiyah Jewish Community in Boston and the “Head Shadchan” at Unorthodox Celebrations. When not recording his own music, like his most recent album – “Notnim B’ahavah Reshut”, Jackson sings with the Chaverai Nevarech Band featured on R’ Josh Warshawsky’s albums.

Jackson and his partner Rachel run the Moishe House Boston Arts Pod, Moishe House’s first community focused on Jewish creativity and art which acts as the home of Hiddur Mitzvah, a Judaica design collective creating innovative, tangible aspects of ritual.