Jenny Scheinman: KANNAPOLIS: A MOVING PORTRAIT + Mischief and Mayhem

“I wanna talk about nostalgia… it’s a hard word. Y’know it’s associated with an over-sentimentalization of things. A very intense feeling.  It doesn’t have to be a longing for something that is lost, necessarily, it can be just the feelings that are triggered by memory.  I’m quite sensitive about not making things too sentimental.  I want to … trigger the audience’s own feelings and not tell people how to feel about it.” — Jenny Scheinman on Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait

We’re elated to present celebrated violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman’s Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait, a stunning live score to portrait film footage shot by late North Carolina filmmaker H. Lee Waters, who documented over 118 towns in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee in the latter half of the Great Depression. 

Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait features Scheinman, along with Robbie Fulks (guitar, banjo, vocals) and Robbie Gjersoe (guitars, vocals), performing fiddle music, folk songs, and field recordings, which breathe new life into these beguiling portraits of Depression-era, small-town America. Focusing on children, dancing, labor, and community, a smile in slow motion, the Washington Post calls this moving and at times hypnotic film and score “beautifully coordinated.” 

Take a look at this short documentary about Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait…and prepare to be transported.

Jenny Scheinman will also present her heavy-hitting ensemble Mischief & Mayhem, including Nels Cline, bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Scott Amendola. Given their wealth of influences and experiences to plunder, Mischief’s makeup leads to a fusion that’s as riveting as it is risky—the perfect backdrop for the capricious Scheinman.