Stereophile: Jenny Scheinman and her All Species Parade

Most of the provocative and charismatic popular music made today is an unclassifiable mixture—a hybrid of whatever styles, sounds, and instruments happen to move its creators. Violinist Jenny Scheinman not only composes multi-hued music that is singularly her own, but she lives in two very different musical worlds: the progressive world of jazz, and the more song- and tradition-based environs of Americana.

Scheinman's latest solo album, All Species Parade, released in October 2024 on the Royal Potato Family label, is a classic example of her unique vision and chameleon-like ability to blend seamlessly into disparate musical contexts, with nods to both jazz and Americana. Living and working in two musical worlds not only allows her to make a living as a professional musician—no easy feat—but it also fits what she repeatedly refers to in conversation as "perspective."

Stir: Jenny Scheinman reflects on and rejoices in nature with All Species Parade

“SOME ARTISTS ARE reluctant to admit to their influences, being convinced of their own sui generis brilliance or else ashamed to admit that they are not entirely unique.

Jenny Scheinman is not one of them. In fact, on her new and quite wonderful double album, All Species Parade, the California-based violinist kicks things off by name-checking one of her favourite jazz composers, Ornette Coleman, on the delightfully eccentric jazz shuffle “Ornette Goes Home”. In turn, “Every Bear That Ever There Was” takes its title from a 1932 novelty hit, “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic", but also paraphrases Henry Mancini’s jaunty “Pink Panther Theme”.

Animal lovers flock together, it seems.

In the press material for All Species Parade, Scheinman also takes pains to point out that “Jaroujiji”, “The Sea Also Rises”, and the title track should be considered parts of a larger whole, “a Duke Ellington–inspired suite that clocks in at 20 minutes”.

The Mercury News: How Jenny Scheinman’s Humboldt roots influenced new music

“Sitting at a Steinway piano passed down from her grandmother, observing the ever-changing skyscape stretching to the horizon over the frothing Pacific Ocean, violinist Jenny Scheinman had plenty of time to contemplate her particular place in the biosphere during the first years of the pandemic.

She’d returned to the sweeping view in the house her back-to-the-land parents built on a remote tract on Humboldt County’s Lost Coast, an ideal location to pursue a project inspired by the flora and fauna that Scheinman encountered as a child during morning horseback rides to a one-room schoolhouse.” - Andy Gilbert

Notes on Jazz | Jenny Scheinman's: All Species Parade: Appreciating Our Relationship to Nature

The master violinist/composer/arranger Jenny Scheinman has released her latest musical gem, All Species Parade, on October 11, 2024 out on Royal Potato Family. For Scheinman fans, its been a long five years since the violinist and her then co-leader  drummer Allison Miller,  released their successful Parlour Game in 2019. But by all accounts the wait has been worth it. The album is a twelve composition, polymorphous, two-cd effort that gets its inspiration from Scheinman's return to her Pacific Northwest's roots in her Humboldt County, California home in 2012 after leaving a prolific career in the New York City area. Scheinman is the product of a folk-inspired, nature-immersive upbringing that has made an indelible tattoo into her musical psyche. Her sound has found its way into collaborations with such diverse artists as Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, Ani Di Franco, Joni Mitchell ,Lou Reed and the metal band Metallica. - Ralph A. Miriello

Musically Speaking: New Music from Tobias Hoffman and Jenny Scheinman

“Playfully inventive, deeply soulful, and frighteningly virtuosic, Scheinman has assembled a sympathetic and equally adept group of musicians to pay homage to the natural wonders of her native Humboldt County, California.”