IMN : Updates for Jenny Scheinman

Editor's Pick: Jenny Scheinman's Mischief & Mayhem

IMN

March 30th, 2012

From DownBeat

Editor’s Pick: Jenny Scheinman’s Mischief & Mayhem
By: Aaron Cohen

As a leader and valuable side player, violinist/singer Jenny Scheinman always sounds like she can adapt any array of textures or sources to her own vision. While she has worked frequently with challenging musicians who’ve fueled her uncanny imagination (like guitarists Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot, or bassist Ben Allison), her new quartet is the best vehicle yet for her stunning compositions. Guitarist Nels Cline is a great sparring partner, whether it’s on the ominous “A Ride With Polly Jean” or the melancholic “The Audit.” On the latter track, drummer Jim Black creates a strong effect behind them with just a few choice cymbal hits. (Black and Scheinman go back a ways, playing Balkan music in mid-’90s New York.) Bassist Todd Sickafoose and Scheinman engage in a moving, low-key dialogue on “July Tenth In Three Four.” Still, it’s all Scheinman’s show, whether she’s creating a startling scrape against the groove on “Blues For Double Vee” or driving a solid rocker, such as “The Mite.”

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Jenny Scheinman's String Theories

IMN

March 5th, 2012

From The Village Voice

Jenny Scheinman’s String Theories
By: Benjamin Lozovsky

On stage at Le Poisson Rouge during 2012’s New York Winter Jazzfest while visibly pregnant and wearing a billowy black top with a delicately ruffled skirt, Jenny Scheinman stood at the center of a melee. Surrounded by her feverishly talented bandmates in Mischief and Mayhem, she commanded her violin and played loud, foreboding, skronky, and downright aggressive music.

Scheinman is known for languid sentimental jaunts and delicate phrasing, tender storytelling and weeping instrumental emotionality, so the fierceness in her playing that night seemed even more striking. She and guitarist Nels Cline jaggedly navigated through avalanches of high-pitched squalor, indulging their shared love of melody in between outbursts.

Afterward, Mischief and Mayhem’s performance seemed to sit in the minds of many as the definitive set of the festival, despite being more categorized by no-wave bravado, serialism, and circuitous rhythms than by its bop or swing. Scheinman understands audiences, though, and she gets that their intrinsic desires aren’t far off from performers’. “You [and your audience] all want to get high together and kind of lose yourself by pushing the limits a little bit,” Scheinman explains. That evening, the whole club soared like a kite.

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Jenny Scheinman: Some Serious Mischief

IMN

February 26th, 2012

From All About Jazz

Jenny Scheinman: Some Serious Mischief
By: Ian Patterson

It’s often the case that the most interesting music is made by musicians with a broad musical palette and openness to new paths and horizons. Violinist/composer Jenny Scheinman certainly qualifies in both regards. Equally at home playing folk tunes or working in essentially modern jazz setups, Scheinman also jumps at the chance to play with classical musicians, and is increasingly in demand as an arranger for a diverse range of musicians, such as Lou Reed and Metallica, Lucinda Williams, Bono, Sean Lennon, and Jesse Cutler.

A tremendous improviser, Scheinman is perhaps best known for her collaborations with guitarist Bill Frisell over the last decade, and while it is fair to say that Frisell’s influence on Scheinman has been significant, her emotive, lyrical playing has also left an indelible mark on over half a dozen of Frisell’s CDs and countless concerts. Like Frisell, Scheinman is not given to exhibitionism, and is instead keenly focused on creating power and beauty through collaboration. With Scheinman, as with Frisell, the song is the thing.

Since her debut recording, Live at Yoshi’s (Avant, 2000), Scheinman has written plenty of captivating compositions of her own, making the leap into singer/songwriter territory on Jenny Scheinman (KOCH Records, 2008) while also working on the ambitious and compelling 13-part suite Crossing the Field (KOCH International Jazz, 2008), featuring a string orchestra. Scheinman doesn’t do comfort zones, and talks of seeking “the thrill of jumping off the cliff every night.” One such cliff from which Scheinman has leaped into the unknown came on a 50-date, 2011 tour with Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn, when she opened the shows with a solo set, without loops, recorded tracks or gimmickry. It’s another example of Scheinman’s insatiable curiosity and of her fearlessness as a creative performer.

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VIDEO: Jenny Scheinman's Mischief & Mayhem

IMN

February 19th, 2012

From WNYC

Jenny Scheinman, ‘Ali Farka Touche,’ Live on Soundcheck

Jenny Scheinman has put together a quartet with some big hitters. Mischief and Mayhem is made up of Scheinman on the violin, bassist Todd Sickafoose, drummer Jim Black and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline.

The band name, Mischief and Mayhem, describes the music, says Scheinman: “The excitement and invitation for things like musical ambush and surprise and pushing things a little bit beyond where the structure of the song might want to go.

Here the quartet plays, “Ali Farka Touche.”

Listen To Jenny Scheinman's Mischief And Mayhem

IMN

August 19th, 2011

From NPR

Jenny Scheinman’s Mischief And Mayhem: Live At The Village Vanguard

Composer and violinist Jenny Scheinman has a new band called Mischief and Mayhem. Perhaps the mischief part comes where hazy, dreamy grooves from the Heartland meet the experimental jazz quirks of Brooklyn. Certainly, it’s a band capable of raucous and rocking mayhem, thanks in part to the presence of Nels Cline, the man Wilco hired to perform its guitar freakouts.

Whatever the etymology, Scheinman and the band are soon to embark on another week at the hallowed jazz hall known as the Village Vanguard. WBGO and NPR Music were there for a live radio broadcast and live video webcast on Wednesday, Aug. 17.

Nels Cline may be the “name” member of this group, but just as capable is the rest of the cast — both longtime Scheinman associates and unique bandleaders in their own right. Bassist Todd Sickafoose plays with Ani DiFranco and Andrew Bird when he isn’t playing jazz gigs, sometimes with his own band Tiny Resistors (which features Scheinman). Drummer Jim Black performs with the best (and weirdest) of improvisers — Dave Douglas, Uri Caine and Tim Berne among others — and has cut five albums with his avant-rock improvising unit AlasNoAxis. As for Scheinman, she’s simply one of the most versatile musicians working today; someone who composes and arranges frequently, tours as a country singer-songwriter and plays with Bill Frisell, Jason Moran and Norah Jones.

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INTERVIEW: Jenny Scheinman, Rising to New Challenges

IMN

May 5th, 2011

From The Albany Times Union

Fiddler Jenny Scheinman returns to Egg, rising to new challenges
By: Michael Eck

Fiddler Jenny Scheinman didn’t grow up like you and I.

Her family was decidedly funky, a cadre of West Coast bohemians who took that idea as far as they could, literally. Scheinman’s youth, in fact, was spent in the westernmost house in the continental United States, at the ocean end of a small river valley in Petrolia, Calif.

Early in her childhood, the house lacked electricity and the modern conveniences associated with it, and she and her siblings played music with their folksinger parents to entertain themselves.

If nothing else, it gave Scheinman — who later studied at Oberlin Conservatory — a solid footing in folk forms and community music-making.

Saturday, she returns to The Egg with legendary Canadian activist and songwriter Bruce Cockburn. She’ll open the show solo and play in Cockburn’s trio (which also features percussionist Gary Craig).

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Jenny Scheinman Relishes Musical Self-Sufficiency

IMN

March 17th, 2011

From The Vancouver Free Press

Jenny Scheinman Relishes Musical Self-Sufficiency
By: Alexander Varty

Growing up in the westernmost house in the lower 48 sounds romantic, but it might not be quite as appealing when there’s a giant wall of water roaring in from Japan. Granted, on the day of the Sendai earthquake, Jenny Scheinman was safe in Brooklyn, where she now lives—but her mom was in Mendocino County, California, watching for waves.

“She’s at home alone, looking out the window at the ocean and writing revolutionary poetry, or something like that,” the violinist and singer explains. “She’s like, ‘I’ve never written through such a tumultuous time, and the tsunami and the earthquake just fit into it.’”

In the end, the waves that struck land just below the Scheinman family home were less than two metres high—or “not enough for an overhead curl”, as the surf-savvy musician points out. And her own plans were only slightly impacted by the Japanese disaster: her mom had planned to head east to baby-sit Scheinman’s young son during rehearsals for this spring’s Bruce Cockburn tour, but Mendocino’s coastal roads were closed due to the tsunami alert.

She’ll figure something out, though. Judging by both her records and her résumé, Scheinman’s one of the most adaptable—and skilled—musicians working today.

As the child of hippie intellectuals, she soon learned the virtues of independent thought. That’s served her well in the Bay Area and Brooklyn avant-garde scenes, where she’s recorded and performed with innovators such as John Zorn, Bill Frisell, and Nels Cline while crafting five records of her own instrumental compositions. Unsurprisingly, folk music was also a part of her early environment, which presumably makes it easier to record with roots icons like Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, and Rodney Crowell. And when she starte

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PREVIEW Jenny Scheinman's Mischief and Mayhem

IMN

November 29th, 2010

From Jazz Police

“Mischief and Mayhem” Abound at the Walker with Jenny Scheinman on December 2nd
By: Andrea Canter

“Expect pure magic from the alchemical mixture of folk-influenced avant-jazz compositions, droning soundscapes, and exuberant, rock-infused improvisations.” —New Yorker

“Mischief and Mayhem,” the name of violinist/vocalist Jenny Scheinman’s quartet, aptly describes the music and the musicians. On December 2nd at the Walker’s McGuire Theater, Scheinman, acclaimed across American folk/country/rock/jazz genres, brings together artists renowed for their improvisational, hard-to-classify chops—Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Ani DeFranco’s “secret weapon” bassist Todd Sickafoose, and futuristic drummer Jim Black.

Scheinman says she grew up “in the western most house in the continental United States,” the daughter of folk musicians. She studied classical piano and violin, more focused on the piano but also learning fiddling, and gaining broad experience through chamber music workshops, Interlochen summer programs, fiddle festivals and a dance/theater company. Scheinman attended Oberlin before moving on to UC Berkeley, where she earned a degree in English Literature. But she decided to dive headlong into jazz, joining the Hot Club of San Francisco and later working around the Bay Area with John Schottand Ben Goldberg, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, and violinist/singer Carla Kihlstedt in various new music ensembles, as well as with the avant-rock band Charming Hostess. Still in California, Scheinman formed her own bands and led the Django Project, giving modern interpretations to Reinhardt’s music.

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REVIEW Jenny Scheinman's Mischief & Mayhem @ Village Vanguard

IMN

July 10th, 2010

from The Wall Street Journal

Kings of Rhythm and a Queen of the Avant-Garde
By Will Friedwald

If the Knitting Factory ever established an outpost in Nashville, Jenny Scheinman’s Mischief & Mayhem band is what you’d hear there. Ms. Scheinman, a violinist, composer, and vocalist, is one of those young players (at 31) who at first seems almost insanely diverse; I heard her for the first time (on records at least) playing behind Norah Jones on the blockbuster country-jazz hybrid “Come Away With Me” and, at about the same time, re-creating the Original Dixieland Jazz Band with clarinet Dan Levinson.

Upon closer look, though, more logical patterns start to emerge. Ms. Scheinman is a veteran of guitarist Bill Frisell’s Sextet (at the Vanguard in 2007), and it’s in that context that her own music makes more obvious sense. In the 50 years of the avant-garde, we’ve heard new jazz based on bebop, on Africa, on old Europe, and the Mississippi Delta—so cutting edge sounds with roots in folk and country music is a perfectly logical step.

Most of the music she played in her opening set at the Vanguard on Tuesday came out of a vaguely Frisell-ian tradition of avant-jazz/Americana. With guitarist Nels Cline (on hiatus from the rock band Wilco) relying heavily on soundscape-style synth effects as a proper stand-in for Mr. Frisell, it was kind of Milton Babbitt meets Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies.

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Jenny Scheinman on WBGO's The Checkout

IMN

June 7th, 2010

(From The Checkout)

Air Date: May 18, 2010

The Checkout features an interview with violinist Jenny Scheinman, new music from the Claudia Quintet, and a studio session with trombonist Nick Vayenas. Also, remembrances of Lena Horne and Hank Jones. WBGO’s Josh Jackson is your host.

Click here to listen

IMN Artists Featured at NYC Winter Jazzfest

IMN

January 11th, 2010

From The New York Times
By Ben Ratliff

NYC Winter Jazzfest occupied the center of Greenwich Village on Friday and Saturday nights, holding down five clubs in a two-block radius, imposing its thoughtful ruckus on the normal Bleecker Street weekend: Long Island girls in microminis, corner dope dealers, 40-year-old boys taking in the Jets-Bengals game at a sports bar and then communing with Skynyrd covers over at the Back Fence.
Now in its sixth year, the festival served several ends. It showed off 55 bands for the attendees of the convention of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, those who book festivals and concerts around the world. It gave the rest of us, for a $25 all-clubs, all-night ticket, a deep index of new jazz. And the attendance — 1,200 on Friday night, 2,500 on Saturday — created a mob. A mob breeds rumor; rumor off-gasses buzz.

And jazz needs buzz. There are always music-school students whose lives are being overturned by some saxophonist they saw somewhere; given the chance they’ll tell you about it. So will club owners, promoters, spry neighborhood sages and the odd obsessive-compulsive or critic. But jazz, frustratingly, is still not quite right for MySpace and MP3 listening — it’s too performance-oriented and makes teenagers gag — so on-the-street buzz remains in short supply. Sometimes, given the economy and the shortage of middlemen, you have to find out about musicians from the musicians themselves, which makes jazz feel kind of 17th century, pre-movable type.

Not here. On Saturday especially you were in a jazz equivalent of South by Southwest, surrounded by tales of not getting in or of hearing something killer.

Le Poisson Rouge was the festival’s flagship hall this year — the biggest space with the best sound, and consequently the most overrun. The pianist Vijay Iyer’s trio, with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, played to roars on Saturday night; last year the group made this audience’s consensus-favorite album, “Historicity,” and its performance showed new confidence through the intricate gnashing of the rhythm section. (The trio played its jolting, stuttering cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang” for the first time live.) There were roars on the same night for Jenny Scheinman and Jason Moran’s duets, sweet gospel-folk-classical tunes empowered with some cool dirt: catarrhal bowing from Ms. Scheinman’s violin, a single violent bang from Mr. Moran’s piano keyboard.

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IMN Showcase Schedule - APAP 2010

IMN

January 5th, 2010

IMN is pleased to invite you to our showcases during the Arts Presenters Conference in New York City in January.

Kathy Mattea
NY Hilton and Towers, Lincoln Suite, 4th Floor, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
Showcase is open to all presenters, RSVP’s requested. Please RSVP to liz@imnworld.com
Sunday, January 10th from 5.55pm – 7.15pm
www.imnworld.com/kathymattea

McCoy Tyner Trio with special guest Gary Bartz
Highline Ballroom 431 W 16th St, New York, NY 10011
Friday, January 8th, 10:00pm
Tickets required, but free with APAP badge by RSVP to jess@imnworld.com
www.imnworld.com/mccoytyner

Chris Potter’s Underground featuring Adam Rogers, Craig Taborn and Nate Smith
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, New York, NY
Tickets are required, and are limited. Please RSVP to liz@imnworld.com
January 5th – 10th, 9pm and 11pm nightly
www.imnworld.com/chrispotter

Jenny Scheinman and Jason Moran Duo
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St, New York, NY
Showcase is free to APAP registrants by reservation, RSVP to rsvp@winterjazzfest.com
Saturday, January 9th, 9:00pm
www.imnworld.com/jennyscheinman
www.imnworld.com/jasonmoran

Jenny Scheinman Returns to Her Roots

IMN

December 7th, 2009

Arcata, CA- Jenny Scheinman returns to her home state of California for a run of shows this month, including a performance near her hometown of Petroila, CA. Located in Humboldt County, Petrolia is two hours south of Humboldt State University where she will play on December 12th to her loving hometown crowd. In anticipation of her return, the University’s student run paper The Lumberjack interviewed the acclaimed violinist about her experience returning to the small town from her now native New York City. Humboldt students are excited, too, for her performance. HSU student Hannah Rainwater is planning to attend after she got turned onto Scheinman after hearing her self titled vocal debut earlier this year: “A friend was playing her album and I had to stop and ask where that voice was coming from.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Scheinman to Perform on New Elvis Costello Show

IMN

November 25th, 2008

Catch Jenny Scheinman on December 10, 2008 when she performs on Spectical: Elvis Costello With. . . which will air on the Sundance Channel. Read more here about Elivis Costello’s new talk show.

Jenny Scheinman:Live @ The Village Vanguard on NPR

IMN

October 29th, 2008

WBGO, October 27, 2008 – In recent years, Jenny Scheinman has found her own voice, in both the figurative and literal sense: Earlier this year, she released her recorded debut as a country singer. But in the broader sense, Scheinman violinist, composer and, yes, vocalist has been hard at work developing a uniquely rich, earthy approach to improvisation agnostic of style. In countless configurations in and around New York, and on a new instrumental album, she applies her broad palette of American music through the filters of an adventurous jazz aesthetic. She’ll do the same with her quartet, featuring standout pianist Jason Moran, at the Village Vanguard, in a concert broadcast live on air by WBGO and live online here at NPR Music. The show takes place Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 9 p.m. ET.