New Cd - Part Two - 2014

Fred Hersch Trio
Floating

By Dan Bilawsky
Live albums and studio albums can by miles or millimeters apart in terms of presentation, conception, quality, layout and reception; it all depends on the circumstances and intentions when a record is made. Pianist Fred Hersch's Floating, for example, nearly erases that potential divide.
While it's against his very nature, Hersch could've haphazardly thrown together a random list of tunes and gone into the studio cold, using an ad hoc group to flesh out this album. In the end, he did the exact opposite. Hersch took his rightfully acclaimed working band—the Fred Hersch Trio—into the studio right after a run at New York's Village Vanguard, the recording sight of his two previous records. Then, he put together a playlist that mimics the nature of one of the trio's live sets, starting with a standard, moving on to originals, throwing in a dose of classic balladry, and ending with a taste of Monk. The end result is a studio album that sits well next to the pianist's live dates.
The aforementioned album-opening standard is "You & The Night & The Music." Here, this warhorse is transformed by the ceaselessly choppy-and-rolling, Latin-inflected 12/8 feel that the trio adopts. Restlessness and respect are the two qualities that shine through as Hersch and company stay faithful to the music in certain ways, yet remain consistently on the move. The title track comes next, occupying a completely different space; it lives up to its name as it drifts and glides along.
Hersch's penchant for penning tributes is well-known at this point, so it should come as no surprise that this album contains more than its fair share of such pieces. Hersch pays respects to his mother and grandmother with a brief episode of beauty ("West Virginia Rose"), tips his cap to this group's bassist—John Hebert—with a swampy-and-groovy show ("Home Fries"), and delivers an airy and loosely flowing tribute to gone-too-soon pianist Shimrit Shoshan("Far Away"). Other works in this category include a dynamic-yet-sensitive nod to bassist Esperanza Spalding("Arcata"), a gentle piece written in honor of Finnish artist Maaria Wirkkala, and a swirling, almost-swinging piece for pianist Kevin Hays("Autumn Haze"); Hersch and Hebert fall into line on that last one, but drummer Eric McPherson cunningly circumvents the feel for the majority of the tune.
The end of the journey—a gorgeously enthralling take on "If Ever I Would Leave You" and a hip run through Monk's "Let's Cool One—further illustrates Hersch's genius and the rapport that exists between these three simpatico travelers.
Track Listing:
You & The Night & The Music; Floating; West Virginia Rose (For Florette & Roslyn; Home Fries (For John Hebert); Far Away (For Shimrit); Arcata (For Esperanza); A Speech to the Sea (For Maaria); Autumn Haze (For Kevin Hays); If Ever I Would Leave You; Let's Cool One.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano; John Hebert: bass; Eric McPherson: drums.

New CD - 2014

Ralph Alessi & Fred Hersch
Only Many



By George Kanzler at The New York City Jazz Record
Trumpeter Ralph Alessi and pianist Fred Hersch are not strangers, having worked together in Hersch’s quintet. That they are familiar and compatible with each other is evident in the rapport achieved on this duo album, made up largely of originals and improvised collaborations. The 14 tracks here range from pointillist abstractions like “Ride”, a fast, jabbing creation, and “Peering”, a slower, more deliberate meditation, to more lyrical, melodic pieces like the gravely solemn “Campbell” and Paul Motian’s sensuous “Blue Midnight”. Thelonious Monk’s “San Francisco Holiday” is puckishly animated by Harmonmuted trumpet and Hersch referencing Monk pianisms as well as the composer’s fondness for repeating his theme in solos and comping.
Alessi commands an arsenal of trumpet techniques, equally at home playing darting, crisp runs and smeared, smudged notes as long, mellifluous tones and sumptuous lines like those on his own hymnlike “Humdrum” or the ringing, clarion “Hands”. Aside from the seven largely improvised collaborations, the trumpeter provides four compositions. Hersch’s only work is the gleaming “Calder”, a piece with bright, spiraling lines and geometric intersections between the two instruments that recall the namesake’s mobiles. At times, Hersch’s piano is spare, almost skeletal, interacting with Alessi as well as with himself, his two hands utterly distinct. There’s a fountain-like tinkling on the collaboration “Floating Head Syndrome”, Hersch in a high range contrasting with Alessi’s lower, breathy tone. Yet his playing is romantically fullbodied on Alessi’s “1st Dog”, one of the few originals with a catchy tune, reinforced by snappy trumpet phrases.
But the often cerebral and compelling force of this collaboration rests on the interaction and interplay between the two, especially as evinced in the longest track: “Someone Digging in the Ground”, a tour de force of both musical technique and dual invention sustained for over ten glorious minutes.

By CamJazz
The second work by Ralph Alessi on CAM Jazz, after the successful debut of “Cognitive Dissonance”. This time the trumpet player shares the honor of appearing on the cover with Fred Hersch, a pianist of great class, who is in perfect accord with his partner in adventure. “Only Many” is prevalently a CD for four hands, proof of the great complicity created in the studio at the time of the recording.
The brief, intense introduction, “Ride”, seems to be almost a warning to the listener, a call to concentrate on what will happen during the 60 minutes of the album. The velvety “Hands”, composed by Alessi alone, is the prelude to one of the two “cover” pieces on the CD, the wonderful “San Francisco Holiday” by a Thelonious Monk, who can never be mentioned and reinterpreted enough. We have to wait until almost the end of “Only Many” to hear the other virtual guest, Paul Motian, with “Blue Midnight”.
Hypnotic, expanded themes, from Monk to Motian, in which improvisation and interplay reign supreme. Hersch and Alessi pursue each other, chase each other, overlap each other and slowly find increasingly different languages and expressive forms, resulting in an utterly fascinating, magnetic CD. Short, essential themes, almost always lasting between two and four minutes, except for the two interpretations of other composers and the long suite, “Someone Digging in the Ground”, which is the prelude to “Snap”, the grand finale.
A new, interesting development of the artistic dialogue between the pianist and the trumpet player that began a few years ago in Pocket Orchestra by Hersch and destined to further, surprising developments.
Recorded at Dolan Recording Studios/NYU Steinhardt School
Recording engineer Paul Geluso