Article Contributed by Calabro Music Media
Published on 2026-09-23
Early in the recording of her evocative new album, One Hundred Years Today, violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman turned to her band in the studio and exclaimed, “More apocalyptic! This is end-of-times jazz!” She had reconvened the superb, sensitively attuned ensemble first heard on her 2024 album All Species Parade: guitarists Bill Frisell and Julian Lage, pianist Carmen Staaf, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollesen. With seven new compositions in hand, largely inspired by her Palestinian Jewish grandmother’s travels through Europe a century ago, Scheinman and company were exploring emotional parallels between the years leading up to World War II and the present moment. She imagined the music flowing like a secret code passed between generations, a means of creating connection in times of upheaval.
“The phrase One Hundred Years Today is really another way of saying eternity,” Scheinman says. “Every song is like a message in a bottle to a future generation, and at the same time the opening of a message from 100 years before.”
The album, due November 6 on RPF Records/Royal Potato Family, is preceded by the first single, “Turns The Wagon Wheel” (listen here), out today. Drawn from author James McBride’s novel Song Yet Sung, in which runaway slaves communicate via cryptic code, the track captures a vivid sense of history’s cyclical nature. Scheinman kept a passage hanging on her wall while composing One Hundred Years Today: “Chance is an instrument of God and the coach wrench turns the wagon wheel.” The spirit of these words is vividly captured in its ardent groove and extended improvisation. It allows the entire band to stretch out, most notably Frisell, who adds a subtle underpinning of nuanced funk.
“Music has long been a medium for the transfer of codes, and as such, it is part of our survival story,” Scheinman says. “There are many codes on this record, but perhaps the most prominent is the four repeated eighth notes on the bass line here. They play throughout, contextualizing the haunting melodies and anchoring Bill’s guitar. If their heartbeat-like pattern is transmitting a message, it is that we are alive, and we are listening.”
As the collection unfolds, Scheinman presents a three-song suite that evokes her grandparents’ romance: “Stars Of The Lower Deck” imagines the couple meeting when her grandmother was returning by boat to her home in Palestine after studying piano at the Royal Conservatory in London, and her grandfather was playing in the ship’s orchestra; “Alive At The Kakadu,” replete with buoyant uptempo swing, is named after the Weimar Republic-era Berlin bar where Scheinman likes to envision her grandmother encountering subversive, unbridled music and theater; “The Edge Of Dawn” conjures the growing shadow of war in the late 1930s that led them to leave Europe for Brooklyn.
“Django In America” pays tribute to the inventive genius of Django Reinhardt, a contemporary of her grandmother whose “wild, expressive, and risky” approach Scheinman gained a deep appreciation for while playing his music to pay her way through college. The ethereal trio piece “Dream Beguine” offers a moment of beauty and escape, and the closing “So Many Moons” serves as a tender expression of gratitude, dedicated to the late record producer Hal Willner.
Through these seven compositions, Scheinman found poetic solace in the ways music and creativity offered a lifeline of hope, and even a means of organized resistance in the face of rapid change, instability, and rising authoritarianism.
“In times of struggle, it's more important than ever to continue making music and art,” Scheinman explains. “It brings joy to the world, but can also let the powers that be know we are listening, and bearing witness.”
Alongside the aforementioned McBride quote, Scheinman also hung another by Linda Ronstadt expressing why humans make music. It ends with the thought: “They sing so the subsequent generations won't forget what the current generation endured, or dreamed, or delighted in.” Indeed, like a message in a bottle washed ashore, One Hundred Years Today exults in humanity’s eternal need to dream, delight and, ultimately, endure.
One Hundred Years Today
Track Listing
1. Turns The Wagon Wheel
2. Django In America
3. Dream Beguine
4. Stars Of The Lower Deck
5. Alive At The Kakadu
6. The Edge Of Dawn
7. So Many Moons
Available November 6, 2026, on vinyl, CD and digital formats.
Pre-order available HERE.
