You might recognize Jenny Scheinman’s name from the liner notes of one of the many high-profile releases on which she’s appeared as a jazz violinist — Norah Jones’s
Come Away with Me sold enough copies that somebody must’ve gotten around to reading the booklet. In addition to her session work and numerous backing-band gigs — in 2005 she toured with Madeleine Peyroux, and she’s a regular with Bill Frisell — Scheinman has issued a string of widely admired instrumental albums under her own name, but this one marks her debut as a singer. It’s a job she’s ably (if not uniquely) equipped for: in the album-opening version of Bob Dylan’s arrangement of “I Was Young When I Left Home,” she summons a wistful blend of excitement and anxiety, and in “Come On Down” (one of four originals here) she manages to stay on top of an appealingly rowdy roadhouse groove. Still, the fireworks on
Jenny Scheinman are mostly of the instrumental variety: check out Frisell’s chamber-folk fingerpicking in “Rebecca’s Song,” or drummer Steve Jordan’s crisp soul-rock swing in “Skinny Man.” It’s unlikely Scheinman would take issue with that assessment; her voice is just one more lovely sound on a record full of them.
JENNY SCHEINMAN | Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston | June 7, 7:30 pm | $18 | 617.369.3306 or mfa.org
