Jenny Scheinman Albums (6)
What The Critics Say
Violinist, songwriter, and composer and Jenny Scheinman's self-titled offering has been affectionately dubbed "the vocal album" by fans; it's her first to feature her voice up front. It is also one of two recordings Scheinman's issued under her own name in 2008 -- the other, Crossing the Field, is instrumental. The players are drummer Kenny Wollesen, guitarist and producer Tony Scherr, and bassist Tim Luntzel. Bill Frisell guests on one track, as does drummer Steve Jordan. Scheinman's voice is plaintive at its core, but it's disciplined and authentic. The material mixes folk, old-timey country, blues, and rock through four originals and seven covers. The opener, " I Was Young When I Left Home," is a traditional folk-blues arranged by Bob Dylan. The lonesome vulnerability in Scheinman's vocal, juxtaposed with Scherr's slide guitar, offers a tale of regret and shame. Her violin folds itself into the bridge, underscoring the sense of distance and motion: her protagonist cannot stop moving; if she does, her "sin" will overwhelm her. We can hear traces of Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Elizabeth Cotten, and Mimi Fariña in this re-telling. Sadness is followed by redemption in her ragged-but-right country rocker, "Come on Down," a love song to God's own desiring angel: "...He kisses your body, he kisses your soul/He kisses you all night and still you want more..." The beauty in the lyric is an invitation: to this spiritual being with carnal talents, and an exhortation for listeners to join her. Other covers include a gorgeous swing read of "Twilight Time," a lost blues by Mississippi John Hurt, a devastatingly effective electric take on Lucinda Williams' "King of Hearts," Tom Waits' "Johnsburg, Illinois," and an anthemic, nasty, party roll on Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame." But it's "Rebecca's Song," by gifted songwriter Rebecca Fanya, that may be the finest moment here. Frisell's atmospheric guitar treads lightly in the melody, and frames Scheinman's weary but determined vocal, tunneling into a lyric that is both autobiographical manifesto and warning. Scheinman's depth in these lines, both vocally and instrumentally with her ghostly violin, are startling, even unnerving. Scheinman's own songs are excellent. "The Green" is a haunted folk tale in waltz time about a missing family member. Scherr's guitars lilt around the bassline as Scheinman's violin becomes the voice of the disappeared. The slow rock shuffle of "Skinny Man" charts the wounds and fears of a single man -- who may stand in for the entire gender. Her voice reaches the breaking point on the refrain: her protagonist acknowledges a shared sense of brokenness and offers shelter, but in his self-absorption he cannot accept them. It's among the most moving, dignified paeans to lost love in years. "Newspaper Angels" is an old-timey country waltz. Its lyrics offer a frozen moment in a sepia-toned photograph, but the characters' loneliness, disintegration, and tragedy are revealed in Scheinman's vocal. It attempts to restore what the photo cannot: the man at the heart of the song; longed for; absent. The album's narratives offer paradoxical emotions in abundance. Scheinman's voice seems transparent, but in its grain, her characters become opaque, formless as smoke. Yet they exist because the physicality in her singing bears witness to their passing -- through us: they exist in the shared experiences in our stories of family, friends, lovers, and ourselves. This is a work of uncommon beauty and depth: sad, graceful, and passionate. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Violinist Jenny Scheinman's instrumental companion recording to her eponymously titled vocal-emphasized effort of the same time period in 2008 is both an opposite reaction to pop styles and an extension of orchestral music with modern-day twists and turns. It reflects her time working with electric guitarist Bill Frisell, who appears on this date, and also gives a bigger picture of her classical influences via a huge string ensemble, while hinting at the modern creative jazz where her violin voicings take a firmer grip at the core. Pianist Jason Moran is a major player on many of the selections, as is drummer Kenny Wollesen, while guests Ron Miles on trumpet and clarinetist Doug Weiselman contribute on select tracks. The music can be serene, broken-hearted, energized, or hopped-up depending on the progression of wide-ranging moods Scheinman and her differently sized groups are able to envision and call forth. Depending on your taste level, the variations are not jarring, but they do offer serious food for thought. Setting this yin/yang tone, "Born into This" is pretty, crystalline, tiptoe music with Frisell and the strings; "I Heart Eye Patch" is a bouncy, romping chase scene; "Three Bits and a Horse" features the trumpet of Miles galloping along via a polka facade; and "That's Delight" is a middling swing with Scheinman's lead violin and Moran's curious piano. The serene string-driven numbers include the slow, symphonic, pastoral "Ana Eco" and "Einsamaller" performed live in concert, while "Ripples in the Aquifer" is reverent and hymnal. Contrasting tracks include the long, funky, jamming street strut "Hard Sole Shoe," loaded up with Moran's crazy piano; the march-cartoon Raymond Scott-styled "The Careeners"; and "Song for Sidiki," with its mix of choppy rhythms, bass clarinet, and folk and Nigerian highlife elements. Scheinman's feature on Duke Ellington's "Awful Sad" is a churchy type blues, and "Processional" features the twangy guitar of Frisell. Their collaboration in the electric guitarist's various groups is best represented during the program's end-game cut, as "Old Brooklyn" wrings out the emotional sponge in a calmed, spiritual fashion for a much larger entity as outlined by Weiselman's pithy clarinet. This effort from Scheinman (who also plays a little piano here and there) is intriguing and seductive from start to finish, fully realized, startlingly beautiful, and rich beyond any of her other recordings. It comes with a most high recommendation. ~ Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
No one can accuse violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman of promulgating any kind of jazz cliché, or even of fitting in especially well with the rest of the Cryptogramophone label's crew of off-kilter jazz experimentalists. Her obsession is with songs and with lyrics -- neither of which appear on this paradoxically titled album. The 12 compositions here aren't actually songs, but are meant to feel like songs, by which Scheinman means that they're intended to be clear, straightforward, singable, and emotionally direct. This they generally do achieve, but even when things get a bit opaque (as on the saucy and slightly goofy "Moe Hawk" and the meandering "Antenna") they're still emotionally compelling. On the album's finest moments, which include a tenderly beautiful composition titled "Sleeping in the Aquifer," which subtly evokes the old hymn "Abide with Me, 'Tis Eventide," a gorgeous violin-and-clarinets trio titled "Little Calypso," and the sweet and gentle "Albert," it really does feel as if Scheinman is sitting down and talking to you, or singing quietly into your ear. On the brilliant "Song of the Open Road," Scheinman and cornetist Ron Miles lock into a graceful waltz, while Bill Frisell's guitar churns away below with controlled ferocity and bassist Tim Luntzel thrums out an insistent pedal point. This kind of balance between directness, intensity, and complexity makes 12 Songs a more than usually impressive and compelling modern jazz album. Very highly recommended. ~ Rick Anderson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman has done it again on Shalagaster, her sophomore effort for John Zorn's Tzadik label. With a quintet which includes pianist Myra Melford, drummer Kenny Wollesen, bassist Trevor Dunn, and trumpeter Ross Johnson, Scheinman wrote ten of the 11 tunes here, which range from klezmer-influenced classical music as it encounters jazz in the modern world -- "Wiseacre" -- to muted, loopy, tango bliss-outs ("Tango for Luna"), to the strange country-song-influenced and arcane "New View of the Horse," to the shimmering glissandi of jazz harmony and arrangement in "American Dipper." Melford's pianism adds depth and dimension to this set; she cavorts with Scheinman's compositions, yet never attempts to trademark them with her own notable style. She sings them with comps, fills, or direct harmonic confrontations. On "Nigun," Scheinman's violin creates the place of erased history as she drones through Melford's contrapuntal drone and melody that seems to come from the heart of Jewish antiquity. But this is not "out" music. It is warm, true sounding, and brilliant in its scope. The arrangements are lovely, even moving; and Ms. Scheinman's compositions carry within them the mystery, history, heartbreak, and humor of the American experience as lived through one at the margins of culture, race, ideology, style, and spirituality. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Since violinist Jenny Scheinman relocated to New York from the Bay Area, her career has been gaining momentum, not least through appearances with the likes of Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, and Vinicius Cantuaria. Now, with the imprimatur of John Zorn's Tzadik label, Scheinman presents her take on "radical Jewish culture" with The Rabbi's Lover, leading a quintet with Russ Johnson on trumpet, Adam Levy on guitar, Greg Cohen or Trevor Dunn on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The program consists of four full-length originals, three shorter vignettes, and two traditional pieces, all infused with sensuousness and eclectic daring. "The Shofar Place," a longer, modern cut inspired by a line from Paul Celan, is a high point. Other strong selections include the defiantly exuberant "Dance Party 1929," the quasi-classical sketch "Rafi's Song," and the klezmer theme "Seating of the Bride," which somehow sounds equally Polish, Spanish, and Italian. In her notes, Scheinman reveals that she played the second klezmer piece, "Firn de Mekhutonim Aheym," at the burial of her father, who was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials -- a "radical" connection to Jewishness indeed. ~ David R. Adler, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Violinist Jenny Scheinman was a full-fledged Left Coaster before transplanting herself to the fertile artistic ground of Brooklyn, so it was only natural that she return to her former home turf to record her first CD as a leader at Oakland's venerable Yoshi's nightspot. On this debut release she seems to have emerged fully formed as a bandleader and compelling soloist. But given Scheinman's extensive experience preceding the September 1999 recording date, playing with everyone from Rova Saxophone Quartet to Charming Hostess, her skillfulness shouldn't be surprising. And the other members of the quartet -- the unbeatable rhythm team of drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Todd Sickafoose together with guitarist Dave MacNab -- are uniquely attuned to her music and the evocative way she makes the violin sing. If one views "jazz" as a genre that by definition should offer opportunities for unbridled improvisation, then Live at Yoshi's might be considered somewhat "jazzier" than the subsequent Tzadik label releases on which Scheinman beautifully celebrates and pays homage to her Jewish heritage, drawing on the deep traditions of Eastern European and Mediterranean folk musics. Yet the violinist also refuses to be pigeonholed by typical jazz vocabularies, resulting in a far-reaching recording that broadly fits within jazz but also crosses boundaries into country, folk, rock, blues, and even classical music. And with a smaller band than the quintets featured on her Tzadik CDs -- not to mention the live setting -- the musicians can and do stretch out, playing both exuberantly and tastefully. The band brings the dynamic level down to a near whisper at times, and then Scheinman leads the ensemble into high-energy territory with a masterful conception of pacing, steadfastly holding back from revealing the full range of her talents before ultimately cutting loose. Highlights are many, beginning at the get-go as Scheinman takes her sweet time on "Junius Elektra," drawing long notes over the band's steady pulse and slowly building into a lovely theme, adding wordless vocals that impart the mood of a conjurer's chant. "Sensitive New Age Caveman" escalates into a free jazz workout for MacNab, fueled by Amendola's rolling and thunderous drumwork that somehow leads to a gentle and understated denouement. "Stumble Light" has a killer arrangement, as Scheinman introduces the melody beneath MacNab's freewheeling solo before the violin and guitar eventually team up in a joint statement of the theme (great arco work from Sickafoose at the conclusion, too). A choogling exercise in chicken-pickin' country-funk, "25 and 2525" maintains an expansive Americana feel; Scheinman pulls out the double stops and octave harmonics like the finest of bluegrass players, eliciting applause from the assembled jazzers who must have momentarily felt like discarding their berets in favor of ten-gallon hats. But Scheinman's "country" isn't retro redneck stuff -- the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Open Country Joy" is a more appropriate antecedent than anything from the world of redneck country-rock, even as Amendola skitters through a barnyard full of percussive embellishments during a pizzicato bridge. Listening to this track, it's easy to see why Bill Frisell gave Scheinman the call-up to join his ensemble. The concluding "Through the Dark" presents the quartet at its very best, stretching out, grooving on a 9/8 vamp, Sickafoose laying down a strong but limber foundation, MacNab's chordal embellishments defining variations in the harmonic landscape, and Amendola driving everything forward with clearly articulated and dynamic percussion as Scheinman swoops and glides over the top. ~ Dave Lynch, All Music Guide
