Melaveh Malkah for Shabbat Shirah
Shabbat Shirah (Shabbat of song) marks our people’s first palpable moment of liberation, having survived the crossing of The Red Sea, and then celebrated their freedom from bondage with joyous song and dance. This year—as Shabbat Shirah overlaps with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend—join vocalist Vanisha Gould, poet Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani, saxophonist John Ellis and BJ Music Director Dan Nadel on guitar as they present a program filled with the themes of freedom, liberation, rebirth, and song.
Vanisha Gould came to New York in 2015 from Simi Valley, California. Inspired by artists like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald – Vanisha has successfully curated her own sound as a composer and band leader. Performing originals and music from the Great American Songbook on several groundbreaking stages both in New York and overseas, she aspires to continue sharing her voice with audiences in New York and beyond.
Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani is a Mizrahi-Jewish poet, multi-genre performer, and native New Yorker. Her work weaves poetry, dance, and song to explore themes of love, family, grief, and what it means to be human. Sabrina has performed her work globally, and her poems can be seen in various publications such as in the anthology So Much Things To Say: One Hundred Poems of Calabash (Akashic Books), and The Wide Shore, a journal of global women’s poetry. She currently resides in Brooklyn.
Dan Nadel is an Israeli-born, New York-based guitarist and composer, whose personal style combines flamenco, jazz, and Middle Eastern influences. He is a bandleader, a solo performing artist, and a collaborator with Tavche Gravche–a multinational neo-Balkan group. A busy musician on the New York scene, Nadel has also worked with many world-renowned artists, including jazz artists Chico Freeman and Dave Liebman, Israeli-French pop star Yael Naim, jazz vocalist Gabrielle Stravelli, and opera singer Audrey Majzlin. In addition to his concert schedule, Nadel is the creative and musical director for IAC’s Shishi Israeli, hosted monthly at B’nai Jeshurun, featuring piyutim and modern-day Israeli music. He also partners with Rabbi Roly Matalon of BJ to lead Bo-i Kallah, a monthly Sefarad-Yerushalayim- inspired Kabbalat Shabbat. Nadel is curator and musical director for Songs of Sacred Time, an ongoing series of Jewish liturgical music concerts at the Manhattan JCC. Nadel is a graduate of the BFA jazz program at The New School. Prior to moving to New York in 1997, Nadel completed a three-year army duty in Israel, where he served as the guitarist for the IDF’s Air Force Band.
John Ellis is widely recognized as one of New York’s premiere tenor saxophone voices. With more than 150 album credits as a sideman, John can be heard with artists as diverse as Kendrick Scott Oracle, Edward Simon, Darcy James Argue, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Helen Sung. John has released 13 albums as a leader, three of those featuring his New Orleans-centered band Double-Wide. His latest release, “Say It Quiet”, is on the Sunnyside record label.