Jenny Scheinman Finds Her Mojo on Northern California’s Lost Coast with ‘All Species Parade’

By Greg Cahill | From the November-December 2024 issue of Strings Magazine

“As the old blues lyric goes, ‘My mind is in the city, but my heart is in the countryside,’” says jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman when asked about her decision in 2012 to leave a thriving career in New York City to return to her childhood home on Northern California’s Lost Coast, a remote stretch of wilderness wedged between Humboldt County’s vast redwood forests and the Pacific Ocean. “I needed a bit more heart time. And a backyard for my kids. Time with my parents. Gulp-able fresh air. Horses. And time to finish some big projects that I found impossible to concentrate on within the din of New York City fabulousness.”

One of those big projects, All Species Parade, just came to fruition. The ten-track collection stretches over 72 minutes and was inspired by the biodiversity of Humboldt County. It is a love letter to the natural beauty of the Golden State. The record’s A-list band features guitarists Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, and Nels Cline; pianist Carmen Staaf; bassist Tony Scherr; and drummer Kenny Wollesen. It is Scheinman’s first album as a leader since 2017’s Here on Earth. 

Strings asked her about the new recording.

What was the genesis of All Species Parade?

I have been working on this piece, from various angles, since I moved back to California. I knew I wanted it to be something big, but I had to try a few different ideas out before I found the right one. My first attempt was a sort of surrealistic multimedia/theater piece centering on Humboldt County’s namesake, Alexander von Humboldt. I also wrote a collection of songs based on characters and stories from the Lost Coast. And I have a notebook full of coffee brainstorms that never saw the light of sound. The only piece that I completed, other than this album, was a short video installation called Coho Come Home that I made with filmmaker Ai Iwane. The earliest songs from this set of music were written during the Covid shutdown when I had the time. I was blessed by the company of three local-ish musicians—Beth Schenck, Matt Wrobel, and John Wood—who had moved out to the Lost Coast to play and workshop new material. We wrote and played all day every day for weeks. All outside, on back porches and in campsites and open-air garages. This was a real golden period.

How did the biodiversity of the region influence these tracks?

I grew up on the Lost Coast and returned a decade ago. My daughter is growing up on horseback in the outback, rustling cattle, learning from big, sentient animals, just like I did. My older kid is growing up in the ocean—surfing, shredding, getting pummeled, and learning how to navigate the many variables of the ocean. So, I’m back in it, immersed here again in my formative scape. Drawing from the sounds around me now, and the sounds in me from childhood. I guess this beauty had just incubated long enough and wanted to be recorded.

How is that reflected in the music?

The expansiveness of the solos. The generous song lengths. The emphasis on interaction. And the multiple chordal instruments—piano and guitars—are intended to conjure something like the understory of a forest, a dynamic, diverse, nuanced soundscape that contains a variety of mutually dependent niches. I’m trying to capture the interconnectedness of nature here that I think lends itself well to jazz. 

Why is it important to communicate that love of nature musically?

Music rejoices in the divine. Music magnifies the divine. Nature is the divine. This is the most basic and most ancient purpose of music. It helps us maintain our joy, our love, and our mental health. It’s magic medicine. 

What were the challenges of arranging this for violin and guitars?

These tunes are not micro-managed, they may not even be very macro-managed. I was going for an undomesticated sound. I did speak a bit about the spirit and dedication of each tune before we pressed the record button. Sometimes just a few words, and in a few cases with some real specific descriptors, like “don’t play sad; play fierce!” As for the guitar players, Bill is in the core band and shifts around according to what is happening; Julian is a special guest acoustic guitar soloist and one-time Django-rhythm strummer; and Nels comes in and sprinkles punk fairy dust over the whole concoction. 

Did the local wildlife inspire the delightfully jaunty “Every Bear That Ever There Was”?

“Every Bear That Ever There Was” is dedicated to the big predator mammals out there. The lions and tigers and bears. The big, strong, scary ones that we always thought were stronger than us but turn out to be just as vulnerable as any other species—in fact, more!—to the climate and habitat changes. You can probably hear that I’m scavenging Mancini’s “Pink Panther” there and also the child’s nursery rhyme “Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” which used to terrify me as a child: “If you go out in the woods today/you better not go alone/If you go out in the woods today/you’re better to stay at home/for every bear that ever there was/is hiding there and that is because/today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.” In regard to how the music reflects nature, listen for the gathering density of chordal instruments in the backgrounds under the final choruses of each solo, where the song gets reharmonized and there’s this rich dissonance that rises up and nearly overwhelms the singularity of the melody. 

You teamed up with three of the jazz world’s most gifted guitarists, all of whom are frequent collaborators amongst themselves. How did those collaborations, often quite conversant, develop on this project?

I’ve been apprenticing with Bill since I was in my early twenties, playing in his bands and studying his approach to music, people, and life. And I’ve been roaming the country in vans with Nels for as long. Julian is a newer friend, but we are bonded through California landscapes, mutual besties, temperament, and through sharing a couple of double bills over the years with Mischief & Mayhem, my quartet with Nels, Todd Sickafoose, and Jim Black. Though the guitarists are conversant by nature, I see them as all having distinct roles in this project. Bill is in the core quintet and plays on every track. Check out that solo on “Ornette Goes Home.” It’s so embedded in the track, so in the rhythm section. So masterful. It blows me away every time. When he listened back to it in the studio, I remember him saying, “I’ve always wanted to play like that, but just never had the nerve.” 

Julian is the special guest. I asked him to play steel-string acoustic guitar. That sound of the pick on the taut steel strings has so much physicality, tactility. I wanted rhapsody, tendrils, thunder, virtuosity, and something tied to the legacy of John McLaughlin—Shakti especially—and Django Reinhardt that could express these pieces, notably “Jaroujiji” and “Nocturne for 2020.” And he also came in handy on “Shutdown Stomp,” where I need that straight 4/4 acoustic guitar strum. It’s not high in the mix, but it’s essential!

Nels is the only overdubbed player on the album. We added him a week or so after the main band session. He is my California brother from way down the coastline and his voice adds that L.A. freedom—he truly makes a band more than the sum of its parts, by both blending on “House of Flowers,” which is a sister tune to “A Ride with Polly Jean,” the first song on [the 2012 album] Mischief & Mayhem, and elevating “The Cape,” my surf tune.

I must have done a lot of very good deeds in some past life to deserve the honor of playing with these guitarists and this band. I don’t know how else to explain it. 

Who are some of your jazz-violin heroes?

Charlie Burnham: So brilliant! So under-recorded! Regina Carter: Regina communicates on her instrument so clearly and so consistently. I first met her in a big band in San Francisco when I was probably 20 years old—even through the deafening horn section, I could hear every note she played. Then again years later in a charanga band in New York City, when she took her nine-second solo, it had a whole story line. It’s unreal. She just communicates at a higher level than everyone. Listen to her play “Come Sunday” sometime. Maybe it projects so far because she mines it from so deep inside. I don’t know. Speaking of Regina, we have a project together called A Grand Night for Stringsthat celebrates jazz violinists. We honor John Blake, Ginger Smock, Stuff Smith, Stephane Grappelli, and others with the rad Detroit string trio the String Queens. Our debut was at the Detroit Jazz Fest, right as things were opening up after the Covid shutdown. We played the Noel Pointer and Stevie Wonder arrangement of “Superwoman” and got the whole audience singing “Where were you when I needed you last winter?” My heart almost burst.

Eyvind Kang: Perhaps the most transcendent player I’ve ever worked with, and/or heard. We play together in Bill Frisell’s string group, with Hank Roberts on cello—also deep!—which has recorded both as a stand-alone quartet and also as part of several larger groups, including my fave-of-all-time, [Frisell’s 2005 recording] Unspeakable, which won a Grammy. Eyvind also collaborated with me as a conductor on [2008’s] Crossing the Field, my recording with septet and string orchestra.

Billy Bang: I heard him only once, at the 55 Bar [a now-defunct jazz club in New York City’s West Village]. Passion and rhythm and so much humanity. His Vietnam albums make me weep and the related Lucky Man documentary is so deep, raw, human, funny, intense. I wish I could have spent more time with him.

I also got into Zbigniew Siefert for a while in my twenties, and Lakshminarayana Shankar, especially on the Shakti albums. There are also some great fiddle players whom I admire, too: Shad Cobb, Stuart Duncan, Vassar Clements.

2017’s Here on Earth had a strong Americana feel, while All Species Parade is jazz fusion. How does the new album showcase your evolution as a composer and bandleader?

Yeah, Here on Earth was a meditation on old-time fiddle tunes. I’ve never really liked the term jazz fusion. It sounds like a cook who can’t make up their mind whether they are making bolognese or stir fry. But in any case, yes, All Species Parade is jazz, for sure. Years ago—20-ish?—I did a four-night run at Smoke in Manhattan with the brilliant jazz pianist Jason Moran, and the late, great Paul Motian on drums. Music critic Ben Ratliff reviewed the show. He was an early champion of mine and wrote some evocative descriptions of the music. Of my band leading, however, he offered some constructive criticism. He thought I restricted the players’ natural tendencies and genius for expansiveness, for spilling over the edges. I took that to heart and feel like I’ve finally responded to it on All Species Parade, where we’re all spilling over the edges, like only jazz musicians can.

What Jenny Scheinman Plays

“My violin was made by Roger Hargrave. Bow was made by Isaac Salchow. My alternate violin was made by Maurizio Tadioli. All are great artists, people, and very much alive, which makes it easier to pester them. I love watching their faces light up when I bring their babies home to them—they read the scratches and shine like they know where I’ve been. It’s a special relationship and one that I cherish. Strings are Thomastik-Infeld Dominant with a wrapped E and a silver D.”