Captain Zohar
Polyrhythmic Trickery and Avant-Hassidism
Captain Zohar began in the early nineties as an experimental improvisation project, using Kabbalistic number/letter permutations as a basis for musical structures. By the late nineties, it had evolved into a progressive rock band which blended Klezmer and Jewish theatrics with high energy, polyrhythmic and sometimes quite atonal composition. Think Frank Zappa meets Martin Buber. This incarnation of the Captain played around the Bay Area between 1998 and 2001.
In 1999, I began working with Jewish Meditation Center Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley. By February of 2000, I began to serve as CHL’s music director and helped launch the popular musical services which have been happening regularly ever since. In 2005, I reunited with original Zohar musicians and childhood friends Josh Miele and drummer Sam Markewich, along with other instrumentalists and vocalists to resurrect the present incarnation of Captain Zohar: A “tree of life” with it’s roots in Klezmer and Jewish devotional music, a trunk of progressive rock and it’s branches reaching toward the heights of Indian Classical music.
We are available to play our original music for concerts and other events, as well as classic Jewish music for weddings and other festive occasions.
Captain Zohar began in the early nineties as an experimental improvisation project, using Kabbalistic number/letter permutations as a basis for musical structures. By the late nineties, it had evolved into a progressive rock band which blended Klezmer and Jewish theatrics with high energy, polyrhythmic and sometimes quite atonal composition. Think Frank Zappa meets Martin Buber. This incarnation of the Captain played around the Bay Area between 1998 and 2001.
In 1999, I began working with Jewish Meditation Center Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley. By February of 2000, I began to serve as CHL’s music director and helped launch the popular musical services which have been happening regularly ever since. In 2005, I reunited with original Zohar musicians and childhood friends Josh Miele and drummer Sam Markewich, along with other instrumentalists and vocalists to resurrect the present incarnation of Captain Zohar: A “tree of life” with it’s roots in Klezmer and Jewish devotional music, a trunk of progressive rock and it’s branches reaching toward the heights of Indian Classical music.
We are available to play our original music for concerts and other events, as well as classic Jewish music for weddings and other festive occasions.