One hUNDRED yEARS TODAY
Coming November 6, 2026
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.”
It was the recent discovery of a treasure trove of postcards that provided the conceptual spark for One Hundred Years Today. Scheinman’s grandmother, an aspiring pianist who studied music at the Royal Conservatory in London, eloped from Palestine in 1926 with Scheinman’s grandfather, a young violinist she had met on a boat while returning from music school. He was paying his passage by performing in the ship’s orchestra. The couple spent a decade traveling throughout Europe, playing music, and rubbing elbows with other artists on the underground scene.
The postcards, penned by musician friends during their travels across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa between 1926 and 1937, revealed a network of young artists who maintained connections in the face of rapid change, instability, and rising authoritarianism. Scheinman found poetic solace in the ways music and creativity offered a lifeline of hope, and even a means of organized resistance. “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.”
single Turns the wagon wheel - released September 23, 2026.
The title of Turns The Wagon Wheel is taken from a passage in James McBride’s novel “Song Yet Sung,” in which a cryptic code is shared between an agent of the underground railroad and a runaway slave. “Chance is an instrument of God and the coach wrench turns the wagon wheel.” Sometimes embedded in lyric, and sometimes in rhythm, music has long been a medium for the transfer of codes, and as such it is part of our survival story.
There are many embedded musical codes in 100 Years but perhaps the most prominent is the four repeated eighth notes in the bass line of Turns The Wagon Wheel, which play throughout, contextualizing the haunting violin melodies, and anchoring Frisell’s ambient guitar. If their heart-beat like pattern is transmitting a message, it is that we are alive, and we are listening.
Featuring: Jenny Scheinman, Bill Frisell, Carmen Staaf, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen
VINYL & CD PRE-ORDER | PRE-SAVE
Scheinman, voted Violinist of the Year in the 2025 DownBeat Critics Poll, has also toured and recorded with songwriting legends such as Lucinda Williams, Bruce Cockburn, Robbie Fulks, Rodney Crowell, Lou Reed, Ani DiFranco and Joni Mitchell. She is featured on the original cast recording of Anais Mitchell’s hit musical Hadestown and has written the scores for several feature films.
tour dates
