Brooklyn Bowl serves as Spiritual Oasis for High Holidays celebrations this September

For the 11th year at Brooklyn Bowl, The Friday Night Jam & FANS have announced a series of spiritually and musically inclined High Holidays services. Four services in late September and early October will be broadcast live for free via Fans.live, led by Rabbi Daniel Brenner and musical director Jeremiah Lockwood, featuring Antibalas’ Jordan McLean, Yuli Beeri, Lenny Kaye, saxophonist Stuart Bogie and a full live band.

The livestreamed shows will take place at Williamsburg’s Brooklyn Bowl (with a select number of tickets for sale) and Relix Studios. 

brooklyn bowl high holidays

The services will feature a mix of live music and remote video contributions from a mix of musicians. Confirmed remote guests include: Dave Harrington (Darkside), Alex Bleeker (Real Estate), Dan Lebowitz (ALO), Eric Krasno (Soulive and Lettuce), Karina Rykman, Ross James (Terrapin Family Band), Aron Magner (Disco Biscuits) and Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman), among others. 

The house band consists of Jeremiah Lockwood, Antibalas’ Jordan McLean, Antibalas’ Timothy Allen, drummer John Bollinger, saxophonist Stuart Bogie and Yula Berri on vocals and bass. The services arrive at the end of a busy summer for Bogie and McLean, including appearances at the lauded Newport Jazz Festival. Internationally based teacher Aliza Rivka will also lead a guided meditation at each event. On the morning of September 26, Leslie Mendelson, Eric Slick (Dr. Dog), and Armo will also make special appearances at Brooklyn Bowl as part of the High Holidays festivities. 

We have said for years that Brooklyn Bowl is our sanctuary, clubhouse, church and synagogue, so it only makes sense that it has grown into the spiritual home for our musically inclined Rosh Hashanah services over the years. Especially at a time when so many of us have been apart from our friends and family due to the pandemic, we hope that our suite of traditional-but-open-minded-and-inclusive services will allow us to connect with each other as we ‘begin again’ at the start of this new year.

Relix’s Editor-in-Chief Mike Greenhaus.

As part of the event’s anniversary celebration, as part of the Sunday, Sept 25 service, Lockwood’s The Sway Machinery will present Hidden Melodies Revealed 15 at Brooklyn Bowl. This new iteration of the concert-ritual will celebrate the widening circles of cantorial revival, and Yiddish experimental expressive culture that have emerged in the last decade.

Offering a counterpoint to The Sway Machinery’s futurist sound, a second stage will be set up in the middle of the venue that will host a “radical traditionalist” band performing new arrangements of Jewish ritual music on strings, led by virtuoso violinist Jake Shulman-Ment, and featuring vocal soloists Yoel Kohn, a leading voice in khazones emerging from the Brooklyn Chassidic community, and Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, Midwest Ska pioneer and thought leader on Jews of Color in the United States. For this performance, McKinney-Baldon will premiere a piece from her upcoming performance project inspired by the life and work of Goldye Steiner, a pioneering Black woman cantor of the 1920s. The resulting worlds of sound will cross boundaries of time, calling upon ritual, and invoking the power of ancestors to imagine radical futures.

In addition to musical guests, the event will also feature revered actor Debra Winger, in the role of the narrator of the animated films The Akeidah, by Shawn Atkins, and Scenes From the Life of Ben Zion Kapov Kagan, by Andrea Dezsö. The narration and score for these animated films will be performed live.

Schedule of High Holidays Events

Sunday September 25 – 7:30PM EST at Brooklyn Bowl. Tickets available here, stream live via Fans.live

Monday September 26 – 10AM EST at Brooklyn Bowl. Tickets available here, stream live via Fans.live

Tuesday, October 4 – 7PM from The Relix Studio, stream live via Fans.live

Wednesday, October 5 – 10AM from The Relix Studio, stream live via Fans.live

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