Search - Jenny Scheinman :: Shalagaster

Jenny Scheinman is a genius

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 03/08/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Perhaps you've heard her with Bill Frisell and the Intercontinentals. Then you already have a foretaste of what I mean. But not the full experience. That comes only through encountering her in her own chosen setting.She's got an entirely new schtick going here. Transcendent Jewish folk-jazz.The thing that jumps out at me is her unique violin tone. Face it. There's not a lot of great jazz violinists. One thinks of Regina Carter, John Blake, Mat Maneri, Stuff Smith, Mark O'Conner. Who else?Jenny Scheinman has done what no other jazz violinist has done: that is, come up with a timbral approach complelely unique and apposite to her instrument in a jazz setting. It's not one I'd've thought of: almost vibrato-less; dark 'n' smokey; splitting the difference between folk-fiddle and classical violin; deriving from a sax-family vocabulary.Set this amidst an absolute killer "Downtown world" jazzband (Myra Melford, piano; Russ Johnson, trumpet; Trevor Dunn, bass; and Kenny Wollesen, drums), and you've got one of the more remarkable discs of the new millennium. Strangely, this record is listed on the Amazon.com product page as having been purchased by those who also bought the brilliant post-rock disc The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky (look for a review forthcoming from me soon). This is NOT a pairing one would've thought likely.But it makes a strange kind of sense, especially in these wildly, gloriously, postmodernly eclectic times. I, for example, a die-hard jazzer, have been enticed into purchasing the remarkable Explosions in the Sky sophomore disc. Metalhead post-rockers have, apparently, been somehow, however oddly, enticed into buying Jewish folk-jazz. All benefit, however unlikely it would seem.My usual MO in these reviews is to try to give quite an extensive word-picture of the soundscape of the discs I review. I'm not going to do that here; not because I couldn't, but because I think you, the reader, would be better served to encounter this wondrous music with as little description as possible. The late, great novelist Walker Percy had an essay, collected in, I believe, Lost in the Cosmos, where he describes the difficulty of any modern person being able to authentically encounter the Grand Canyon as those who first viewed it did. Why they can't is because they've all likely seen photos of it before actually personally encountering it. So I'm not going to give you any photos; I'm just going to urge you, with as much persuasion as I can muster, to encounter Jenny Scheinman's fabulous disc Shalagaster. I pretty much guarantee you won't be disappointed."