Jenny Scheinman - International Music Network

Jenny Scheinman
“...her voice [is] a friendly and pure instrument that she invests
with honesty and a childlike affection for her material.”
-Genre is irrelevant, categories are deaf. This theory couldn't be better argued
than by noted composer, violinist, and singer Jenny Scheinman's two new
recordings on Koch Records: Crossing The Field and Jenny Scheinman. If
Scheinman learned anything from her childhood growing up in a remote rural
town of 300 people in northern California two hours by car from the nearest deputy
sheriff, in a home with no electricity or phone and traveling often by horse, it was to
appreciate and make use of everything. In these two unprecedented albums she does
just that, unabashedly embracing it all: the violin and the fiddle, the epic orchestral
and the narrative, the dance and the meditation, the raw and the rocking. From
small town living to becoming an acclaimed artist working with the likes of
Norah Jones, Bill Frisell, Lucinda Williams, Madeleine
Peyroux, Marc Ribot and countless others, Scheinman leaps into
the deep waters of American music, both vocally and instrumentally,
spotlighting her singular talents as an idiosyncratic songwriter.
“...Ms. Scheinman is a killer player... She has the street
musician’s trick of getting attention with the pure power of a
single, perfect note.” -On Crossing The Field, the lush and cinematic arrangements feature standout performances by longtime collaborator and Grammy Award-winning guitarist
Bill Frisell, jazz-piano extraordinaire Jason Moran (Blue Note), and a string
orchestra led by founding members of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, who
are known for their ongoing work in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project. Ranging
from sweeping symphonic passages to hard swinging jazz trios, the 12 original
compositions and one Duke Ellington cover - “Awful Sad” - soar with
elegance, conviction, and groove.
Jenny Scheinman combines original songs with renditions of old-time country
and blues selections by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Tom
Waits, Mississippi John Hurt, and several others. Scheinman grew up in
the remote rural northwest and in many ways this recording is an intimate letter
home. She finds herself within the storied tradition of strong, plainspoken female
country singers who bring reality and unadorned honesty to hard-won songs of
love and life. Scheinman began showcasing her singing tunes at her summer
residency at The Living Room (NYC) with Norah Jones and the Handsome
Band backing her up, and at her long-running Tuesday night residency at
Barbes in Brooklyn alongside guitarist/singer Tony Scherr. Scherr, known for
his visceral productions and passionate playing, produced and recorded the
eponymous album to eight-track analog tape in his Brooklyn home studio.
ARTIST WEBSITE:
http://www.jennyscheinman.com/
IMN ARTIST PAGE:
http://www.imnworld.com/jennyscheinman
278 Main Street , Gloucester, MA 01930 | Tel: 978/283-2883 Fax: 978/283-2330 | http://www.imnworld.com/
INTERNATIONAL MUSIC NETWORK
MUSIC REVIEW
A harmonious sound By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | June 10, 2008 The back porch meets the front parlor when Jenny Scheinman plays music. Her take on folk and bluegrass is uncommonly refined, while jazz turns earthy and plain‐spoken in Scheinman's hands. The Brooklyn‐based violinist and composer has made a name as both an expansive young bandleader and an in‐demand sidewoman backing artists like Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, and Lucinda Williams, but now Scheinman is taking a turn in the spotlight ‐ and at the microphone ‐ touring in support of her first, self‐titled vocal album. Her show at the MFA's Remis Auditorium was an absolute pleasure. She sings like she plays, in declarative phrases, unflashy but rousing, each note chosen for its musical and emotional resonance. (She also dresses like she plays, in a surprisingly harmonious combo of clingy summer dress and scuffed brown oxfords.) Most songs started with Scheinman holding her violin like a guitar, strumming or plucking the humblest plinking sounds imaginable; then the band would ease in, building burnished waltzes and graceful thigh‐slappers and gently piercing rock songs on an electric and an acoustic guitar (Adam Levy and Robbie Gjersoe) and upright bass (Todd Sickafoose). The set list was as subtly eclectic and evocative as the playing: Scheinman's artful, thoughtful originals fit beautifully alongside a tart read of Jelly Roll Morton's "Winin' Boy Blues," Lucinda Williams's tough‐as‐nails tearjerker "King of Hearts," a swinging take on the romantic Platters's hit "Twilight Time," and traditionals like "I Was Young When I Left Home" and the Mississippi John Hurt obscurity "Miss Collins." Maybe it's her clear‐eyed approach to whatever she's playing that makes Scheinman's genre‐blurring repertoire feel so seamless and of a piece. Blood ties are the glue on the new album, where the covers are songs she learned as a girl from her parents and the originals are unflinching family portraits. "Newspaper Angels" is a melancholy sketch of her isolated hometown in Northern California, and "The Green" tells the true and haunted story of her aunt, who disappeared one day without a word. She road‐tested several brand new songs at the MFA, as well, one a minimalist rock tune about her judgmental older sister, another a folk song with a fascinating vantage point from which the singer wonders if her lover's affections would be truer if he were her brother. Even on the evening's most adventurous number, a modern pop meditation by Rebecca Fanya that Scheinman has dubbed "Rebecca's Song," the artist's luminous violin solo ‐ a jigsaw puzzle of long, fat tones and surprising squiggles was anchored by an extraordinary sense of humanity and humility. If only Tom Waits could have heard her close the show with "Johnsburg, Illinois." It's one of Waits's rare autobiographies, an uncharacteristically sweet love song written in the early '80s about his new wife, and Scheinman brought it plaintively, tenderly to life. June 11, 2008
A Violinist With Stories to Share (and Sing)
By NATE CHINEN
One evening last month, the violinist Jenny Scheinman settled in for her customary early set at Barbès,
the cozy Park Slope bar that has long been her second home. Though she has been heralded over the
last five years as a venturesome improviser, her first number was a vocal feature, “I Was Young When I
Left Home,” one of many traditional songs associated with the young Bob Dylan. Ms. Scheinman,
cradling her violin in the crook of an elbow, sang in a clear, agreeable tone, with a hint of nasal twang.
She wasn’t dabbling in this air of rusticity. The song appears on her self-titled new album, along with
tunes by Jimmy Reed and Mississippi John Hurt and a handful of originals. Released by Koch Records
two weeks ago, the album presents Ms. Scheinman as a folk singer. She took the same stance at Barbès,
as she will again on Wednesday night at Joe’s Pub, with a band that includes the album’s producer and
guitarist, Tony Scherr.
Publicly this may mark some new terrain for Ms. Scheinman, 35, but it isn’t really that much of a
stretch. In recent years she has worked closely with the folk-pop chanteuses Norah Jones and
Madeleine Peyroux, and more casually with the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. And singing has
been part of the picture for Ms. Scheinman since her distinctly agrarian childhood. Even in her
approach to instrumental music, lyricism prevails.
“A song isn’t just a sort of mathematical puzzle for her; it has a real emotional meaning,” the guitarist
Bill Frisell said at the Village Vanguard in April, between jubilant sets by his all-strings 858 Quartet,
which includes Ms. Scheinman. “She can play out or free or whatever, but you always hear that center,
that melody thing, which is so important.”
Ms. Scheinman proved that point in performance with Mr. Frisell, both at the Vanguard and on his
recent album “History, Mystery” (Nonesuch). She makes an even stronger case as a soloist and
composer on another new album, her own instrumental “Crossing the Field,” which features Mr. Frisell,
the pianist Jason Moran and strings. (Due out in the fall, it’s now available as a download at
kochentertainment.com.)
“Crossing the Field” offers a dazzlingly broad perspective on Ms. Scheinman’s musical interests:
dissonant chamber music, jumpy tarantellas, frenetic swing. All the music, save for one Duke
Ellington ballad, was written in seclusion on the Big Island of Hawaii, as one prolific outpouring after
a grueling three-day hike. It’s an eclectic but focused work.
For now, though, the vocal record commands a greater share of Ms. Scheinman’s attention. “I’ve taken a
bit of a conscious turn towards popular music, or music for regular people,” she said at a Peruvian
restaurant in the East Village, shortly before a trip to Nashville for a recording session with Mr. Frisell.
“For a while I considered the music I was doing to be extremely peripheral. I felt very steeped in a fringe
community.”
That notion of periphery applies to some of the experimental music Ms. Scheinman has played in the
last decade, with musicians like the violinist Carla Kihlstedt and the guitarist Nels Cline. In another
sense it could just as easily describe her experience as a product of rural Northern California, growing
up in what she has called “the westernmost house in the continental United States,” six hours north of
San Francisco by winding road. In the summer her family lived outdoors, using running water from a
stream.
“Music was all about a forum for people to get together and revel,” she said. “My dad would put on
town cabarets three times a year.” Her parents, amateur folk musicians, encouraged their children’s
piano and violin studies, and Ms. Scheinman took part in fiddle festivals, arts camps and chamber
music workshops. There wasn’t much else in the way of outside musical influence: for a long time she
didn’t listen to records, because her family had no electricity. (Later, she said, they installed a
windmill.)
“I missed my generation, in a sense, because we didn’t really listen to the radio,” Ms. Scheinman said.
“But I loved Randy Newman, I loved Patsy Cline. We listened to a lot of Hank Williams; that era of
country music was what was in the bars growing up.” She corrected herself: “The bar. There was only
one.”
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-1990s, Ms. Scheinman fell in
with the creative music scene in the Bay Area, playing with Ms. Kihlstedt and others, like the Rova
Saxophone Quartet. She also worked with more commercial concerns, like the Hot Club of San
Francisco, which traffics in Gypsy swing.
In 1999 she moved to New York, where she busked on the occasional subway platform. In time she met
musicians like the pianist Myra Melford. A few years ago she began playing on most Tuesday nights at
Barbès, treating the gig as a workshop. “The shape and size and sound of that room has had an
influence on me,” she said, citing her 2005 album, “12 Songs” (Cryptogramophone), as partly a product
of that influence.
The vocal album, she said, “wasn’t very intentional.” It originated as a 60th-birthday present to her
father. “There were a lot of songs he sang to me as a kid, and that I sang with him.” She recorded
them at Mr. Scherr’s home studio in Brooklyn.
“I remember just taking the reels and going, ‘Wow, Jenny, this is really good. This should be a record,’ ”
said Mr. Scherr, who recently made the transition from jazz bassist to singer-songwriter himself. He
played some of the music for Mr. Frisell, with whom he regularly works in a trio. More encouragement
came from Norah Jones, among others.
Approaching the project as an album, Ms. Scheinman decided to make it even more personal, adding
songs that she had written, including one touching country waltz about her old household (“There’s
five miles between them and the nearest neighbor”) and another about the disappearance of her aunt
(“Why’d she decide not to warn us?”).
Gradually she brought her songs onto the bandstand, at Barbès and the Living Room. “My first gigs, I
was terrified. And thrilled,” she said. “I’m sort of thrilled by things that terrify me. But it’s less
terrifying now; I feel like I can relax into the songs more.”
Ms. Scheinman added that the experience of singing had improved her violin playing. “What is it to
play lyrically, but without words?” she mused. “There’s a huge gap between them. But certain players
have that expressive quality in their playing, where you almost hear meaning. And as a singer, when
you do have meaning and can deliver that along with the music, it hones my awareness of what’s
possible as a melody.”
By: Dennis Cook
It's hard not to fall in love with Jenny Scheinman. The
violinist's raw talent, boundless creativity and ability to
dovetail with a startling range of musicians and styles marks
her as a singular talent. But there's an X-factor to
Scheinman's appeal, a wondrous undercurrent that reminds
one why music matters, why it stirs us to tears and laughter,
why we hold it close to our chest and let it whisper in the
long shadows of our lives. Scheinman taps into all the bright
and heavy things of this world and channels them through
her instrument and her thoughtful, adventurous
compositions. While perhaps not a household name to Joe
Six-Pack, Scheinman is a go-to player for the likes of Bill
Frisell, Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, Danny Barnes,
Madeleine Peyroux, John Zorn and she's currently on tour
with country great Rodney Crowell in a special acoustic trio
with Will Kimbrough (dates here).
Jenny Scheinman by Michael Wilson
Her status in the music industry would be secured purely as a master session musician and side person
but her intellect and terrifically searching nature have increasingly found her carving out her own space
in the great canon. In 2008, she's released two amazing albums, the instrumental Crossing The Field
(currently available digitally and out on CD on October 14 through Koch Records), and her debut as a
vocalist, Jenny Scheinman, where she mingles her own tunes with Jimmy Reed, Tom Waits,
Mississippi John Hurt and a stunning read of Lucinda Williams' "King of Hearts." What's revealed in the
vast spaces covered by this pair of albums is the blossoming of one of the great musicians of our times.
While a loaded thing to say about any player, Scheinman reaffirms that notion again and again, and her
legions of top flight musician fans only grows year after year.
"It takes quite a lot of discipline to limit the possible. I'd have to work a lot harder not to have that scope.
I'm always amazed at how musicians are able to limit themselves. This is just my whole life out on two
records, but it wasn't intentional," says Scheinman. "I didn't realize they'd both be done at the same time
but when I found out I was thrilled. It poses the questions, 'What is an American musician? What are
musicians now after growing up in an era when almost anything was available to listen to?' This is more
and more the case with the Internet. There's been so many influences in my ear, so all this stuff just
comes out."
"You can't expect everybody to like everything, and
nobody's wrong for not liking or liking something; it's
just a matter of taste. I just try to follow my ear, and it
led me to these two records. There's a whole group of
people that don't even like vocals, and the reverse, too. I
sometimes play a vocal show and the jazz Nazis come
and ask, 'When are you going to play your instrumental
music again?' And definitely the reverse when I'm
playing a jazz show! People are longing for the clarity
and impact of a song with words," continues Scheinman.
"So, it's been a fun social experiment to do both in the
same town, often for the same audience. I'm really
Jenny Scheinman by Wendy Andringa
impressed and heartened by how people like both. I have
no expectations that many people will like both. Either it's a sign that the music is connected and related
in a deeper way than by category and bin and genre, or it's just a sign that peoples' ears are open, and if
delivered honestly people respond to music."
Both albums are very welcoming, and like the artist behind them, they aren't hard records to fall for,
though they couldn't be more different from one another in many ways. A subliminal bond exists
through a number of musicians that play on both releases, including Frisell (guitar), bassist Tim Luntzel
and drummer Kenny Wollesen.
"The personnel is similar, which is a sign that this community of players shares this love of a broad
range of music. It's not just me, it's not just some loony in Brooklyn that came from a small town and
grew up on cowboy music. It's a movement, I think, as evidenced by the two records," says Scheinman,
whose latest material is expressly melodic but has dabbled in more avant sounds, sometimes getting
downright out there, which she loves. "Some of the gigs I've done with Nels [Cline] have been just my
favorite. Being able to tangle and unify with somebody like that is pretty thrilling. I think my next record
will be with Nels, Jim Black [drums] and Todd Sickafoose [bass], which is a band I toured last year
with my music. Nels is after the ecstasy; he's a very sentimental player. If my records sound sentimental
in a literal way – because of the melodicism and lyricism of it – his are sentimental purely on an energy
level. I don't mean sentimental in any sort of romantic love scene in a movie way. It comes from a very
deep sentiment, and he's after something ecstatic."
I'm not adherent to any particular idea of
spirituality, but music is definitely magic
and spiritual and a gift you're giving back to
something. Because we don't make it up; we
couldn't, it's too good for humans to have
come up with.
-Jenny Scheinman
Crossing The Field finds her working with a large string section, brass and more in service of twelve
compositions that hold their own against the one guest composer in the bunch, Duke Ellington. Her
eloquence and sense of play echo Ellington's own, and Scheinman is one of the few instrumental
musicians extending Ellington's creative line. She shows equal boldness on her vocal record, where she
sings for the first time in the studio and puts her originals up against
very strong cover material
"That was a very brave idea [laughs]. Basically, I was picking my
favorite songs from my entire life – from my family and playing with
singers – and I picked ones that I wouldn't be here without. To add
originals to that I really had to be confident about them; I hope they
match," offers Scheinman, who's assembled a very full, very together
song cycle that carries the listener along on her personal journey. "I put
a lot of energy into sequencing. To be honest, I'm sequencing after I've
written two songs for a twelve song record. I think, 'If I have these
songs, what other flavor am I craving now?' I'm trying to create a good
story. I don't put all the good ones up front, and if they aren't all
favorites I don't have a record."
The vocal album begins with Bob Dylan's arrangement of the
traditional "I Was Young When I Left Home" further elevated by
Scheinman's immediately captivating voice – a warm, natural and
wholly musical thing – and then goosed nicely by the following track,
"Come On Down," a road dust kickin'
Jenny Scheinman by Michael Wilson
rocker penned by Scheinman. It's not a tune even longtime fans likely saw coming but she's a natural
electric blues-rock queen.
"Someone came up with a good phrase for it, 'a mystic rocker,' and I feel like they really got it. It is
about God and sex, which is rock 'n' roll, at its best. It's the subject matter of the tune as well as the feel,"
says Scheinman, who often asks questions of the listener, stirring debate in what can often be a onesided conversation. It is part and parcel of her gift for engagement, a tactile reach within her music that
draws one closer, whether she's singing or playing her violin. "Songwriting is so intuitive that I'm not
thinking strategy. I just wait till I feel like I have a song. But, I'm sure you're right. When Lucinda
[Williams] or Dylan asks a question it's interesting in the context of the music because there's not a
silence after the question; there's still music and the audience is there responding in some way. I've
written a bunch more songs, and my next [vocal] record will have to be all originals I think. And a
couple of my new songs do have questions as their main theme. One goes, 'When you gonna pack your
suitcase and run, run, run away from me? When you gonna give your final farewell?' and there's "Who's
gonna get your money when you're gone? Who's gonna have your children if you don't?'"
The vocal release weaves the music with the lyrics, the meaning and mood marbled together, notably on
"The Green," which possesses incredible sensitivity on every level.
Jenny Scheinman by Michael Wilson
"There's a moment near the end where I always get this
sort of out-of-body experience. I'm talking about 'The
Green,' which I never really defined. When
[guitarist/producer Tony Scherr] plays this response to
the line, 'The green will take her some time or another,'
he plays this ascending, blurry, angelic thing that
disappears into the stratosphere. And it really is the
ascending of a soul or something really spiritual, and it
made me understand that word in a very deep way. We
write things that we don't know how to fully explain,
and he explained it the best way possible, with music,
without words."
This spiritual element resides in the ground water of
Scheinman's work in total. There's a soulful bent to her playing and composition that's much more
effective and moving than the majority of what's delivered from most pulpits.
"I'm not adherent to any particular idea of spirituality, but music is definitely magic and spiritual and a
gift you're giving back to something. Because we don't make it up; we couldn't, it's too good for humans
to have come up with. Like we can't make plants; they're too beautiful and genius. And if you just give
this gift back it gets deep and transcendent," says Scheinman. "That's what everybody is trying to do.
There's nothing new about that idea, but I've been blessed to work with players that are going after
something beyond human. It's a miraculous event to go to a concert and be moved with a bunch of
strangers by a bunch of strangers onstage either singing about something or just playing something that
has emotions you can connect with intimately."
Split personality
Jenny Scheinman gets herself together
By JON GARELICK | June 2, 2008
INSTRUMENTAL: “My whole life has been unspoken,”
says the violinist of her first vocal album.
Jenny Scheinman is such an unassuming, modest musician that it’s easy to underestimate the radicalness
of her two new CDs, Jenny Scheinman and Crossing the Field. It’s not simply the proximity of the
release dates. (The first disc is out now on Koch, the other is available on vinyl and as a download and
will come out on CD sometime in the fall.) It’s not even that the first is a vocal record and the second
instrumental. Neither is it the differences in style. The first mixes country, folk, rock, and blues; the
latter is an amalgam of jazz improvisation and open-form composition — Ellington’s “Awful Sad” is
here, and so are Scheinman’s takes on American hymn tunes, parlor ditties, Kurt Weill, circus music,
African guitar pop, and 20th-century classical modernism. That in itself covers a lot of ground. But
compare her plainspoken delivery of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Miss Collins” on Jenny Scheinman with
the frightening threnody of clashing strings and throbbing drone in her “Einsamaller” from Crossing the
Field. This isn’t like Esperanza Spalding going from a free-piano jazz trio to a jazz-pop vocal album, or
Herbie Hancock writing a “jazzy” film score. It’s not even the difference between Pat Metheny and the
Art Ensemble of Chicago. It’s more like the difference between Maybelle Carter and Alban Berg.
Eclecticism is such a given these days that it’s almost a red flag — another word for dilettante. But
Scheinman has come by her eclecticism honestly, and as you cozy up to the two CDs, it’s soon clear that
they’re part of the same sensibility — someone enamored of “American music,” whatever that is. The
sound of Scheinman’s Americana style is recognizable, but her radicalism has as much to do with
audiences, performing traditions, and an attitude toward the marketplace.
Scheinman, who plays the MFA this Saturday night, has been a comer for the past decade or so —
mostly as a violinist playing in bands led by Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, Bill Frisell, Madeleine
Peyroux, and the Brazilian guitarist and singer Vinicius Cantuária. In the meantime, she’s been releasing
her own records, exploring her travels in Eastern European folk and klezmer and all manner of LatinAmerican music. But on 2006’s 12 Songs (Cryptogramophone), she more or less zero’d in on the
American-ness of her sound — 12 instrumentals that in some cases seemed to cry out for lyrics.
Now, writing different songs, she’s come up with some. Four of the 11 songs on Jenny Scheinman are
originals: stories of an aunt who disappeared (“The Green”), an enigmatic drifter (“Skinny Man”), an
isolated country family (“Newspaper Angels”). And there’s the one full-on guitar-rocker, “Come On
Down,” an invocation, a plea for love or at least salvation.
But it’s the opener, the Bob Dylan arrangement of the traditional “I Was Young When I Left Home,”
that sets the table: Scheinman’s affectless vocals, a character who could easily be a young man as a
young woman, Tony Scher’s slide guitar, Tim Luntzel’s bass, all spare, with Scheinman’s voice up front
and untreated, her fiddle country-raw. That directness, the fully imagined unity of the arrangement,
carries her through the whole CD and its apt choice of covers — in addition to “Miss Collins,” there’s
Lucinda Williams’s “King of Hearts,” Jimmy Reed’s “Shame Shame Shame,” the Platters’ “Twilight
Time,” Tom Waits’s “Johnsburg, Illinois,” and fellow Brooklynite Rebecca Fanya’s “Rebecca’s Song.”
Recorded in Scher’s Brooklyn apartment, Jenny Scheinman leans heavily on his guitar, with Frisell,
Luntzel, and drummers Kenny Wollesen and Steve Jordan. And it’s as much a guitar record as a
Scheinman vocal record. Crossing the Field, on the other hand, entailed a full string section, with solo
settings for Frisell, pianist Jason Moran, and cornettist Ron Miles as well as Scheinman’s violin. There’s
little here as simple as a 32-bar pop song form or a 12-bar blues. Even “Hard Sole Shoe,” which sets up
a funky blues vamp for a Moran piano solo, spins off into call-and-response patterns for the string
section, a passage of extended piano solos alongside a long string melody, a Scheinman solo, and then a
mysterious extended string crescendo/decrescendo and fade-out with Doug Wieselman’s clarinet over
bass, lightly strummed guitar, and a powdery dusting of effects. Throughout the CDs, Scheinman’s own
playing defers multi-note pyrotechnics in favor of her warm tone, conversational phrasing, and rhythmic
incisiveness. When her fiddle picks up the melody in “I Was Young When I Left Home,” it’s another
voice, in conversation with itself.
“If I don’t want to be what people call ‘eclectic,’ ” she says when I reach her over the phone at her home
in Brooklyn, “I would really have to rein myself in. Because I’m certainly not trying to be. It just
happens. And it may be just the plague or the benefit of my generation — just listening from such an
early age to so many different kinds of music and then taking a kind of intuitive approach to
composition.”
Scheinman grew up in Petrolia, Northern California, in what she describes on her Web site as “the
western-most house in the continental United States,” in a community she calls “the ocean end of a river
valley . . . home to a mix of old ranchers and transplanted East Coast back-to-the-landers.” Her parents
were folk musicians, so there were music lessons early on. Even now, she says, when she thinks of
“Twilight Time,” she’s more likely to think of her father singing it than the Platters, “even though the
Platters were much better singers than my father.” By 14 she was studying jazz piano and theory. There
was study at Oberlin Conservatory, an honors degree in English from UC-Berkeley, gigs around the Bay
Area playing the fiddle-swing repertoire (Django Reinhardt/Stéphane Grappelli pieces, Stuff Smith), and
then gigs with the avant-garde scene centered on the ROVA string-quartet crowd (“these sort of Bay
Area thinker people,” says Scheinman with a laugh).
She made connections in New York through the producer Lee Townsend, whom she knew from San
Francisco — hence Frisell and eventually Jones, Williams, etc. It was Jones who eventually encouraged
her to make her own vocal record.
“There is an element of writing songs with words that is an assignment,” Scheinman tells me.
“Sometimes it all comes at once. But I practice it. It was a conscious choice to figure out how to write
songs with words. And a lot of that research was going through all the songs that I grew up with. And
you know, there are plenty of stories to tell, especially if you’re just starting to write. My whole life has
been unspoken, because everything’s been instrumental.”
At the MFA she’ll be playing the “singing” material and probably some new originals, with guitarists
Adam Levy and Robbie Gjersoe and likely bassist Todd Sickafoose. And no drummer — which will put
the focus on the singing and the songs.
“My next record will probably be all original. There’s something about telling a story that’s true that’s
very satisfying and cathartic. Like ‘The Green,’ the one from my aunt, is a true story. Processing things
in general, talking about them, is so helpful, and singing about them night after night is very helpful
personally. But also part of what’s helpful about it is that you’re singing for an audience, and the story,
which is such a personal story, resonates with the audience, you feel the comfort of the whole world.
There’s something about singing your own song that’s an advantage if it’s a decent song. If it’s a good
song, it’s really an advantage, because you know what it’s about so deeply, and you can really tell it.”
All Things Considered
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91237647
Jenny Scheinman Makes a Vocal Debut
By Jon Kalish
- Michael Wilson
All Things Considered, June 10, 2008 - Jenny Scheinman is one of New York's most in-demand violinists. She's
backed up everyone from Aretha Franklin to Norah Jones to Bono, and she plays classical music with a local
string quartet and orchestra. She's also released many albums of instrumental jazz. But Scheinman's latest
record, Jenny Scheinman, features her singing.
Scheinman estimates that she's played more than 200 studio sessions and club dates in the past year. "The
schedule of it is hard," she says. "The actual real-life trying to figure out how much side-personing to do and
how much leading to do and how to do all of it. At this point, I'm lucky enough to love everybody I play with.
I'm not really doing so many gigs for the money anymore, which is really lucky."
More Than Luck
Producer Hal Willner says it's not just luck. "She's just one of those people that can do anything," he says. "I
mean, she can play with anybody, anything; her solos are, of course, beautiful. She's an absolute chameleon to
fit into a situation, yet be herself."
Willner has used Scheinman many times, including on the 2004 Grammy Award-winning album Unspeakable,
by guitarist Bill Frisell.
Scheinman says that everyone with whom she's spent time ends up influencing her music in some way. This is
especially true of Frisell.
"I've really played a lot with him over the last decade and have been able to study his music through playing it,"
Scheinman says. "Which is the very best way to study anything and see how he reacts to different players, see
how he adapts to different situations, see how he leads his band. I'm loyal to people I work with for a long time,
because in some ways, I learn more."
Strings and Swing
Scheinman has made a number of acclaimed recordings of her own in addition to the side work. One of her fans
is George Robinson, a music critic for Jewish Week newspaper in New York.
"She's got classical technique, but she's got a terrific sense of swing and a good improviser's sense of structure,"
Robinson says. "She's learned a valuable lesson that I wish more improvisers would learn, which is, 'Say what
you have to say and get off,' instead of, 'I've got a solo now. I'm going to play everything I know.' "
Scheinman just finished work on a new instrumental album: It's now available as a digital download and on
vinyl, and it comes out on CD in the fall. She did all of the arranging for a large string ensemble — another
talent for which she's becoming known. Willner has used Scheinman to arrange songs for Bono and Lucinda
Williams, and he suggested Scheinman to Lou Reed when the rock legend needed string arrangements for a
song called "Power of the Heart."
"Right off the bat, she started playing things on keyboard, and I said, 'That's a great keyboard part,' Reed recalls.
"She says, 'Well, it's actually a string part — will be a string part.' And it was, and it's fantastic. The arranging
and the playing keys in to the emotion of a song in a way that I haven't heard very often. It's probably one of the
best experiences I ever had working with an arranger."
Voices in Her Head
Working with singers has been a big part of Jenny Scheinman's career. In fact, songs have always been in her
head. Her parents were folk musicians, and she's been singing since she was a kid.
"I love singing," Scheinman says. "I love words. I love writing songs. I love puzzling over the lyric, over the
end of a line. You know, a song teaches you so much, and I'm learning so much more about melodies — even
playing. You know, singing has taught me how to play melodies more."
But for her new recording, Scheinman has chosen to focus on singing and put the violin in the backseat.
Scheinman's foray into vocal music will likely benefit her musical voice, Robinson says. And he says he'll listen
to anything Scheinman records, though he's not crazy about her vocal debut.
"When the Stones first started playing, and they were doing British versions of great blues and R&B tunes,
[Mick] Jagger said, 'I don't know why anybody would buy one of our records if they could get Slim Harpo's,' "
Robinson says. "I'm not as enthused about Jenny Scheinman, which is basically her alt-country move. I listen to
a lot of alt-country myself, but if I can listen to Gillian Welch, it renders somebody doing a similar thing
slightly superfluous."
But Scheinman's fans seem to dig the singing. At Barbes, a small performance space in Brooklyn where
Scheinman has been a fixture for several years, a recent singing gig was well attended. She plans to make
another vocal recording, and can be seen singing and playing violin in the upcoming movie The Butler's in
Love.
It was her first acting experience, but it was also just another in the dizzying schedule of sessions Scheinman
played in the last year. And while she wants to spend more time leading her own bands, most of her work still
comes as a session player.
"Mostly, I'm still just responding to the phone," Scheinman says. "You know, people call, and if I can do it and
it sounds fun, I'll do it."