Why, after four albums, Pinback’s Rob Crow and Zach Smith still covet their humble home recordings

Hugh Masekela talks touring, the state of independent music in Africa

Anonymous 4 is singing proof that the road to salvation is paved with polyphony

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band stomps and hollers like nobody else

There’s an advantage to being born and raised in one place; you feel like you’ve got roots. But unless you were weaned in Manhattan, the question inevitably is raised: How does my hometown measure up? Such was the question answered for Santa Cruzan and local jazz prodigy Jesse Scheinin, who recently returned home from his first semester as a freshman at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Scheinin, a tenor sax player, wasted no time in finding his way to the cultural Mecca just a short train ride south of Beantown, both to “see some shows and play with friends.” “It’s pretty incredible,” he says of NYC. “There’s always something going on … I hope to be going down a lot more.” But what could’ve been an intimidating transition to the big leagues, proved seamless for the 18-year-old Scheinin, who before heading east, made quite a name for himself here as a member of the Kuumbwa All-Star High School Band and the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 2006 Next Generation Jazz Orchestra. “To have a club of that level,” says Scheinin of Kuumbwa, “in Santa Cruz, in such a small town, and having such great musicians coming through—even in New York or anywhere, the club would still stand up because it’s such a great environment to listen to music. It’s so relaxed and unpretentious.” A deeply provocative player, Scheinin cites improvisation, its spontaneity and permission to express emotion as the foundation for his love of jazz. He performs tonight with three fellow students and says to expect new compositions—broader, evolved, the product of many 3:30 a.m. sessions that took place in the basement practice rooms of his dorm. “They’re just natural melodies that happen in my head,” Scheinin says of his songs, some that tumble out in their entirety, others that fester, revealing themselves slowly over time. “I just want to be able to reach that level where there is nothing getting in between me and expressing who I am through the saxophone.

 

Mirah thinks outside the exoskeleton

Whether you’re an aficionado or jazz-estranged, Marsalis and his big band want to win you over big time

The Trash Orchestra creates a musical ruckus