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| Michael Friedmann is the co-founder and composer/arranger of the Rabbinical School Dropouts. A “reed and woodwind ace,” according to critic Thom Jurek of All Music Guide, Michael entertains audiences and his parents alike on clarinet, saxophone, and melodica (a wind-blown keyboard). Along with his private music instruction, he has performed with several Jewish, jazz, and world music ensembles as well as in musical theatre productions. |
Jonathan Friedmann is Cantor of Temple Bet Knesset BaMidbar, Las Vegas, and studies hazzanut with Cantor William Sharlin. He is also earning as masters in religious studies at Cal State University, Long Beach. Jonathan teaches religious school at Temple Israel, Long Beach and Temple Beth El, San Pedro, and enjoys a busy schedule writing new tunes for the band and "gigging" on mandolin, cello, and electric bass. |
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Bob Weller, is the Captain of the Weller Ship San Diego. As a San Diego jazz legend, Bob and his masterfully tuned piano helps navigate the Dropouts into uncharted waters. |
Danny Weller is a young looking bass virtuoso studying at the New England Conservatory. He lays down the grooves for which the Dropouts are famous. Sometimes, when he's feeling real funky, he adds the violin to the mix. |
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Nicolas Carvajal is primarily a klezmer and jazz drummer, but also plays guitar and sings in an indie rock group based in San Diego called The Drinks. His work includes leading the Rabbinical School Dropouts' rhythm section sine the beginning and leading The Drinks. He has traveled, recorded and written with these groups and also worked as a freelance drummer and a musical theatre musician mostly in Jewish folk and contemporary styles. |
Jonathan Rotter, trombonist, enjoys, and seeks to propagate through music, abstraction, grounded, as it must be, in historical communal experience, ideally leading to enlightenment and actuation. He was born to rock, has been around the block, and wouldn't put his horn in hock. |
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Hank Friedmann is an undergraduate in the Russian Studies Department at UCLA. He has been in the band since he was 14, and has no recollection of life before that. His instrument of choice is the Bass Clarinet. Hank also loves filmmaking and puts together the annual Transdimensional Short Film Festival. |
Jesse Bluelake Barkin,
currently on his fifth sabbatical Currently on D.L. |
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Ze’ev Mahar
gets his paws into
everything,
including engineering the band's latest project. Amongst other musical
endeavors, he
is the leader of the original jazz ensemble
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Ravi Deo plays the tabla and doumbek for the Dropouts while earning a double major in ethnomusicology and marine biology UCLA. A member of an incredibly artistic and educated family, Ravi adds the flair and excitement the Dropouts are famous for. |
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