Jenny Scheinman Quintet

Jenny Scheinman (violin), Carman Staaf (piano), Steve Cardenas (guitar), Tony Scherr (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums)

Playfully inventive, deeply soulful, and frighteningly virtuosic, Scheinman’s latest stellar release, All Species Parade, has assembled a sympathetic and equally adept group of musicians to pay homage to the natural wonders of her native Humboldt County, California.” – Musically Speaking 

“Scheinman [has] a distinctive vision of American music, suffused with plainspoken beauty and fortified by country, gospel, and melting-pot folk, along with jazz and the blues.” – New York Times

Jenny Scheinman, acclaimed violinist and composer, for many years a stalwart of the New York jazz and creative music scenes, returned to her native Humboldt County, California in 2012. There she has continued her artistic evolution, as heard on her recent albums Here on Earth (“packed with moments of joyous ecstasy and wind-swept solemnity” – Downbeat),  Parlour Game, a co-lead collaboration with Allison Miller (“The band levitates and feels grounded both” – PopMatters), and The Littlest Prisoner, an album of songs in trio with Bill Frisell and Brian Blade (“self-assured, made with a deft, steady hand.” – New York Times).

For years, Scheinman nursed the idea of a musical homage to Humboldt, in particular the area known as the Lost Coast, a remote, earthquake- and mudslide-prone region of coastal northern California, where she was raised. She considered the project from many angles. She wrote a song cycle based on the “crusty characters” from her hometown and sketched out a surrealist multimedia project based on the county’s namesake, Alexander Von Humboldt. She collaborated with filmmaker Ai Aiwane on a video installation about the Mattole River (Cojo Come Home) and immersed herself in the sounds and cultural history of the region, with hopes of conjuring, in music, the extraordinary diversity of life in the Pacific Northwest. Her epic new release, All Species Parade, is the result of these meditations.

 The all-original program is brought to life over the course of a double album, by pianist Carmen Staaf, guitar icons Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, and Julian Lage, and the revered rhythm team of bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen.

In addition to her extensive work in jazz and improvised music with Jason Moran, Brian Blade, Ron Miles, Allison Miller, Vinicius Cantuaria and many more, Jenny Scheinman has toured and recorded with songwriting legends such as Lucinda Williams, Bruce Cockburn, Robbie Fulks, Rodney Crowell, Lou Reed, Ani DiFranco and Joni Mitchell. She is featured on the original cast recording of Anais Mitchell’s hit musical Hadestown, and has written several feature length movie scores, including the forthcoming Avenue Of The Giants. In March 2015 she premiered a multimedia performance at Duke University entitled Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait (the basis for her album Here on Earth), which she continues to present in theaters around the country.