Lincoln Center's acclaimed series American Songbook returns in January for its twelfth season celebrating the diversity of American popular song. For 16 nights of pop, folk, cabaret, country, rock, and show tunes, the series will explore the best of the golden age of musical standards through to today's most dynamic contemporary songwriting. The 2010 season - January 13 through March 6 - will bring to the stage some of today's most gifted interpreters of song, including top jazz artist Dee Dee Bridgewater and rock's gritty queen, Marianne Faithfull. It will feature opportunities to hear the acclaimed stage actress Martha Plimpton and Broadway star Leslie Uggams in intimate concert settings. Two of the hottest composers on the theater scene - Jeanine Tesori ("Shrek The Musical" and "Caroline, or Change") and Michael Friedman "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" and "Gone Missing") - will perform evenings of their music along with special guests. The growing presence and influence of Latin music in the American Songbook canon will be represented by David Hidalgo and Louie Perez, two of the founding members of the band Los Lobos. Hidalgo and Perez will explore their four decades of writing and performing songs that are some of the best in Latin roots-rock. The series will close with an evening with one of Broadway's most enduring divas, the fabulous Chita Rivera.

American Songbook will be presented in the spectacular Allen Room of Frederick P. Rose Hall. The Allen Room possesses one of New York's greatest settings - a stunning vista of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline that provides an evocative backdrop for the performers.

TICKETS can be purchased online beginning November 1st at Lincoln Center's website AmericanSongbook.org, via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, or at the Frederick P. Rose Hall Box Office. Tickets for The Friends of American Songbook go on sale October 27th.

Suzanne Vega, Dirty Projectors, St. Vincent, Gabriel Kahane, and Nellie McKay are also playing shows as part of the series.

Dirty Projectors' most recent NYC show was a short set at the Bell House as part of the New Yorker Festival. Their next NYC shows are sold out gigs at Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg. Full Lincoln Center schedule below...

Continue reading "Dirty Projectors, St Vincent, Nellie McKay, Marianne Faithfull, others part of 2010 season of Lincoln Center's American Songbook"

DOWNLOAD: Jenny Scheinman - Moe Hawk (MP3) (clip)
DOWNLOAD: Jenny Scheinman - June 21 (MP3) (clip)

Jenny Scheinman, band & Nels Cline in Chicago - Feb 2007 (CRED)

Drawing from a deep reservoir of musicians, violinist Jenny Scheinman has experimented with innumerable permutations at her regular Tuesday night Barbès gigs. This past April she found something special when combining upright bassist Todd Sickafoose, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Jim Black (the first meeting of Cline and Black), so she brought them back together for a mini-tour, stopping at Joe’s Pub for two sets (Aug. 6th). Her music’s inherent lyricism, with folk and traditional influences, tamped the wilder impulses of Cline and Black, who both creatively served the songs. [NYC review @ All About Jazz]

Check out a video from that show on YouTube. As many already know, one of Nels Cline's other jobs (since 2004) is playing guitar with Wilco.

"Jenny Scheinman, violinist/composer, was voted the #1 Rising Star Violinist in the 2005, 2004 and 2003 Downbeat Critics' Polls, has performed and recorded extensively with Bill Frisell as well as Norah Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, Nels Cline, Vinicius Cantuaria, Marc Ribot and Myra Melford." [Jenny's biography]

"Her carny blend of jazz, Americana and rock finds its closest kin in the music of Tom Waits, former Bay Area neighbors Tin Hat and fellow roots-jazz hybridizer Bill Frisell, who has collaborated often with her." [Philly.com]

"Busy downtown violinist Jenny Scheinman’s records tend to get filed in the jazz bin, and she works out her more pop-oriented inclinations at the Living Room. In her semiregular hang at Barbès, anything goes." [Time Out]

It's that 'everything goes' attitude by a talented musician that makes Jenny's regular Tuesday night shows at the intimate Barbes in Park Slope so special - not to mention the regular cast of super-talented musicians that regularly play with her at the shows while she sings and plays violin.

One of those special collaborators is jazz guitarist Tony Scherr, and that's exactly who will be joining Jenny at her next very special appearance at the free BrooklynVegan party upstairs at Pianos, NYC - on Wednesday October 17, 2007 (4:45 pm - right before Bon Iver). Stay tuned for more details.

Thanks to Araneo for the above picture of Jenny and Norah at The Living Room in 2005.

“It’s weird,” she says, finding a surreal humor in it. “Probably George Bush has heard me, come to think of it. He’s probably heard me on Norah Jones’ record. If 20 million records are sold, they’ve got to get to people’s ears you’d never imagine.” [All About Jazz]

Among countless other things, Jenny also plays violin on the new Lucinda Williams album. The MP3s above are clips from her own 2005 album entitled 12 Songs