Jenny Scheinman - All Species Parade

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-led 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, past and present, 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. It was recorded by Eli Crews at The Bunker in Brooklyn, NY and mixed by Grammy Award-nominated engineer Tucker Martine and mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound.

Though All Species Parade offers a brimming 72 minutes of music, it only contains 10 songs, several over 11 minutes long, and three of which (“Jaroujiji,” “The Sea Also Rises” and “All Species Parade”) comprise an Ellington-inspired suite that clocks in at 20 minutes. This long-form approach is a departure for Scheinman, whose ten previous albums tend toward a more concise, song-like aesthetic. On this album she says that she “wanted to let us play. I encouraged the musicians to spill over the edges and be their most expansive selves. This is nature worship music, and I didn’t want it to feel domesticated.” Scheinman also deliberately orchestrated the album with multiple chordal players, which, “like the complex understory of a forest,” creates a multi-textured, ever-adapting network of sound.

Scheinman’s playing is radiant, soulful, stamped with jazz vernacular and old-time fiddling tradition and buoyed by her superb lyrical poise and technique. Throughout we hear Frisell’s exploratory wisdom and evidence of his deep connection with Scheinman (whose side-person credits include nine Frisell albums). The songs with straight quintet range from the playful “Ornette Goes Home” and the Mancini-eseque “Every Bear That Ever There Was,” to the more placid, atmospheric “With Sea Lions” and the grooving and immersive title track, which Scheinman describes as “a party to which animals of all sizes, colors and adaptations are invited.”

We hear Julian Lage on acoustic guitar on three tracks, including the processional “Jaroujiji” (dedicated to the Wiyot tribe), the Django-esque “Shutdown Stomp” and the fierce elegy “Nocturne for 2020.” The adventurous Cline, longtime member of Wilco, augments Frisell on the surf-rocker “The Cape” (named for Cape Mendocino) and the flowing “House of Flowers,” which is a sister piece to “A Ride with Polly Jean,” the leadoff track from Scheinman’s 2012 release Mischief & Mayhem (also featuring Cline).

While All Species Parade does evoke a sense of pastoral calm and wonder, it also strives to capture “a charged relationship to the natural world,” Scheinman says, “a feeling of being part of something bigger than ourselves. Something powerful, fragile and constantly changing. Something alive. I want to recreate that experience of awe.”

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.