Richard Scheinin

Richard Scheinin's work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone and other national publications. A staff writer at SFJAZZ, he was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, including Mavis Staples, Sonny Rollins, Michael Tilson Thomas, MC Hammer, and the Dalai Lama.

During his 50-year career, he has written on a wide array of subjects, including environmental health, religion, and baseball. He is the author of "Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America’s National Pastime" (W.W. Norton, 1994), a history of baseball. He has traveled widely as a journalist, covering Israeli-Palestinian relations in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, and the plight of street children in Brazil.

But his greatest passion is music, principally jazz. Broadly respected for his jazz criticism and feature writing, he brings a lifetime of knowledge and listening to “Jazz: The Best of the Apollo, Village Vanguard, and Riverside Sessions” (ACC Art Books, 2026). The book is a time capsule, featuring 300 of photographer Steve Schapiro’s stunning jazz images from New York City in the early ‘60s. It is peppered by Scheinin’s explanatory text and pithy essays; his writing is suffused by his love of the music. Over the past half century, he has interviewed many of the musicians captured by Schapiro’s camera: Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter. Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Heath, Charles McPherson, Cedar Walton, Albert “Tootie” Heath. Arising from personal experience, his writing reflects his deep respect for this uniquely American art form and the musicians who create it.