Howard Fishman and the Biting Fish Brass Band will kick off SummerNights at the Jewish Museum on July 12 (photo by Nisha Sondhe)
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday, July 12, 19, 26, $15, 7:30
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org/summernights
“Performance is a religious activity to me,” Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and composer Howard Fishman wrote in March on the Huffington Post. “I don’t proselytize. The faith that I have is personal. I don’t believe that there is one right way to live, or that any group of people that has organized themselves under the name of a particular brand of religion has all the answers. But my experience tells me that we can make ourselves available to many of life’s mysteries by listening to a sort of inner voice, whatever we want to call it.” Fishman will share his inner voice and more as he opens the Jewish Museum’s SummerNights 2012 series on July 12, backed by his Biting Fish Brass Band, which includes trombone, trumpet, tuba, and drums. SummerNights continues on July 19 with local Balkan soul gypsy funk favorites Slavic Soul Party! and concludes on July 26 with One Ring Zero, the Brooklyn experimental klezmer outfit whose Author Project consists of songs with lyrics by such writers as Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers, and Paul Auster. There will also be free Chozen ice cream available and an open bar, and the galleries will remain open until 8:00 so you can check out such exhibitions as Kehinde Wiley’s “The World Stage: Israel” and “Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940.”