25 2nd Place
Brooklyn NY 11231
USA
718-923-5668
Email:
Website:
jennyscheinman.com
Travels to: Anywhere
Biography:
Jenny Scheinman, violinist/composer, works with a variety of performers including Norah Jones, Bill Frisell, Vinicius Cantuaria, Nels Cline, Scott Amendola, Myra Melford and John Zorn. She grew up on American folk and fiddle music, studied at Oberlin Conservatory, and has been performing as a jazz violinist since she was a teenager. She has released a number of recordings of her own, most recently The Rabbi's Lover (Tzadik) which features Russ Johnson, Adam Levy, Greg Cohen, and Kenny Wollesen. I grew up in the westernmost house in the continental United States. If you can find it on the map you still might not be able to find it in on the planet. It was beautiful and equipped with a riotous radical artistic community of back-to-the-land New Yorkers. From an early age I took piano and violin lessons, along with my three brothers and sisters, from various teachers in the nearest town. I was a Suzuki student and had a very dedicated and inspiring piano teacher, and until early college was most ambitious and focused as a pianist. My father and mother are both quite musical, and from an early age I sang and played violin around the campfire all summer. By the age of ten I was winning and losing fiddle festivals, had busqued for my dinner fare in Europe, and had given several solo piano concerts. I was one of six students at the small high school that my parents and other adults created to avoid sending their kids two hours away to a public education facility. I was thirteen years old in my freshman year, having skipped third grade (too tall for second grade) and eighth grade. (Otherwise, there would only be five students at the high school, which would have been difficult on the soccer field.) I continued attending theory lessons and private piano and violin lessons in town, attended chamber music workshops, Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, and travelled for a month of every school year with Human Nature, a dance/theater company directed by a local choreographer.