But I’ve never seen her so fiery, so fluent across so many musical styles, or just having so much damn fun as last night at the Village Vanguard, leading a quartet she calls Mayhem & Mischief.
Scheinman’s music has always blended jazz, folk, bluegrass, and blues, with the occasional hint of chamber and rock. But joined by a group that includes electric guitarist Nels Cline (who, of course, plays with Wilco as well as several avant-leaning jazz groups), drummer Jim Black (whose slapdash but disciplined polyrhythms egg everyone on), and bassist Todd Sickafoose (who lays down a tight, mean bassline, assuring his bandmates that they can fly far and high, knowing the tether to earth is secure)—well, it rocks, it’s just thrilling, I haven’t smiled so much at a jazz concert in ages.
This isn’t the usual sort of “fusion,” which blends jazz and rock (and perhaps another genre or two) into some homogenous soundscape. No, Scheinman & Co. retain each style’s distinctive idiom while somehow clanging, melding, sometimes even seamlessly weaving them together.
Sometimes for instance, Scheinman bows a lovely ballad, Cline wails or strums some slightly off-centered chords or twirls some electronic effects, Black klook-a-mops the trapset, Sickafoose lays down the law—and everybody in the packed Vanguard is tapping his foot and swaying his head (or her foot and head: lots of women in the house).
There’s no noise. This is composed music—all written by Scheinman, much of it in the last few months, intricate enough to demand a top-notch band to make it simmer and boil. This is such a band.
They play through Sunday. Good news for those who can’t make it: Scheinman told me after the set that she’s taking them into a recording studio at the end of the week. Watch out for that album!
