The last time I caught up with composer and violinist extraordinaire Jenny Scheinman she’d just released her 2017 album Here On Earth. Whereas that stellar release was best described as jazz flavored Americana, Scheinman’s latest All Species Parade is the converse, Americana flavored jazz. It’s a musical homage to her native Humboldt County, California, to which she returned in 2012 after many years in New York. While making several albums in the meantime, she’s been contemplating just such a project, and it finally has reached fruition.
Scheinman has enlisted a corps of top-notch partners to work with on the album, including longtime collaborator Bill Frisell on guitar, with some additional contributions from guitarists Julian Lage (acoustic) and Nels Cline (electric), pianist Carmen Staaf, and the standout rhythm section of Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen on bass and drums, respectively. Together they bring to life Scheinman’s meditations and celebrations of her slice of home on the fabled Lost Coast.
There are untold riches to plumb here. Rock out in the surf with the dualing guitars of Cline and Frisell on “The Cape,” and with Lage going all Django jazz on “Shutdown Stomp.” Groove to the solid jazz or “Ornette Goes Home.” Frolic with the wild animals on the deeply grooving “All Species Parade” and the bluesy, jaunty “Every Bear That Ever There Was.”
Honor the Indigenous Wiyot people on the stately, multi-layered “Jaroujiji,” which was their name for the place now known as Eureka, Humboldt’s county seat. It’s the opening part of a three-piece Ellingtonian suite that also includes the dramatic “The Sea Also Rises” and the title track. Contemplate the sea and its inhabitants, and the whole world and our place in it in the final pieces, “With Sea Lions” and “Nocturne For 2020.”
All Species Parade is a career highlight for Jenny Scheinman, brought joyously to life by a sympathetic ensemble.
(Royal Potato Family, 2024)
