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The Sweet Smell of Success: Jenny Scheinman's All Species Parade

Glenn Siegel

There are many ways to measure success in the jazz world. Financial remuneration, and its related gauge, popularity, is one common metric. Accolades and critical response is another. Other yardsticks of success, like being part of a collaborative community of like-minded artists, and sharing your creative life with appreciative audiences, offer more intrinsic rewards. By all those criteria, violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman is flourishing.

 

The 45 year old daughter of Humboldt County brought her latest project, All Species Parade, to the Community Music School of Springfield on January 9. Featuring Steve Cardenas (guitar), Julian Shore (piano), Tony Scherr (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums) and Julianna Cressman (dance), Scheinman’s band was on a three day jaunt through Portsmouth, NH (Jimmy’s Jazz and Blues Club) and New York (City Winery), with a western Mass stop in-between, courtesy of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

 

Touring in support of her recent Royal Potato Family release, All Species Parade, the project is a paean to the Lost Coast, the remote, northern section of Californian coast where Scheinman grew up. The live performance mostly mirrored the material on the album, which is an impressive, fully realized body of work.

 

The evening opened with “Ornette Goes Home”, a folk-flecked swinger with solo room for everyone, then stretched out for 90 glorious minutes. Each composition had something distinct to say, blending and borrowing from multiple genres without becoming puree. “Shutdown Stomp” was a down-home hoe-down, revealing Scheinman’s honky-tonk fiddler side. “House of Flowers”, a lovely piece with the air of a British isle traditional, featured a delicate melody that highlighted Scheinman’s beautiful tone. The band was expert and brought the written material to life.

 

Scheinman explained in her introduction that “Jaroujiji” was a Wiyot word that means “where you sit and rest”, and references a place settlers came to call Eureka (“I have found it”). The Wiyot are a small northern California tribe that in 1860 were massacred almost to the point of extinction. Scheinman, who has done extensive research about the region and its history, was moved to hear Jazz Shares Vice President Priscilla Page’s family story. Page’s great-great grandmother, two years old at the time, was one of 100 Wiyots who survived that mass killing on Indian Island in Humboldt Bay.

 

The band was anchored by bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen, who are the rhythm team for Steve Bernstein’s Sexmob and various Bill Frisell ensembles. Their easy rapport put us all at ease. At the post-concert reception, Wollesen shared the story of his grandmother, Rose Thorne, who wrote a dozen songs in the 1920s and 30s that were thought lost in a fire but were recently found. Wollesen arranged and recorded the songs and shared a download code for one of them: “Moon Swing”, featuring Wollesen on vibraphone and the massive bass marimba, which he bought from Scott Robinson (who had two!) Scherr’s bass permeated the elegant Newhouse Hall with a deep luscious sound. He used a bass supplied by the Music School which was in need of some tender loving care. Scherr was gracious about the state of the instrument and resourceful in bringing it up to snuff.

 

The Jazz Shares streak of confounding medical issues reached three consecutive concerts when Carmen Staaf, who is on the recording, got sick and was unable to play piano. Luckily her husband, Julian Shore, was able to pinch hit at the last minute. He told me that unlike his friends Noah Preminger and Dan Weiss, who delight in throwing musical curve balls at musicians, Scheinman and her band were terrifically supportive as he embarked on a crash course to learn the material. He acquitted himself quite well. His extensive solos on “Shutdown Stomp”, and the as yet unrecorded, “For B”, showed his fluid bop chops and his rapid learning curve understanding the architecture of each composition.

 

Steve Cardenas is the consummate professional. He has an incisive, unadorned sound and a thorough grasp on jazz guitar history. He was a long-time member of Paul Motion’s Electric Bebop Band, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and multiple ensembles led by Ben Allison. He has recorded extensively as a leader for Sunnyside Records, his most recent being Healing Power (The Music of Carla Bley) featuring Allison and Ted Nash. His work on the evening’s concluding piece, “Song for Sidiki”, written by Scheinman for the Malian percussionist Sidiki Camara, highlighted Cardenas’ innovative take on the west African electric guitar tradition. 

 

Scheinman has led a charmed life in music. She’s been a regular in bands led by Allison Miller and Bill Frisell, and has toured with Lucinda Williams, Jason Moran, Ani DiFranco and Robbie Fulks. She performed on the original cast recording of Anais Mitchell’s musical “Hadestown”, and has written the score to the movie, “Avenue of the Giants”. Her bandmates are all good friends; it’s clear that relationships matter to her. Scheinman is engaged in the here and now and spent the day of her concert walking to the Connecticut River. She was a gracious bandleader and was clearly having fun on stage. Her playing was confident and easily cut across styles.

 

All Species Parade is performing at the Big Ears Festival, the Savanah Jazz Festival and the Green Mill (Chicago) in the coming months. She’s also performing in Allison Miller’s multimedia piece, Rivers in Our Veins at 92NY Center For Culture & Arts, and will be at Bombyx on Feb. 4 with Bill Frisell’s In My Dreams. Jenny Scheinman is playing bigger, more prestigious venues these days. The critical acclaim is pouring in and she’s making music of high quality with close collaborators. She’s got success written all over her.

 

 

 

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