1 Sem 2018 - Part Two

Fred Hersch Trio
Live In Europe



By Dan McClenaghan
Fred Hersch's 2009 recording, Whirl (Palmetto Records), was where pure magic first occurred in the pianist's extensive and consistently superb discography. That particular outing introduced his now long-standing trio with bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson. Alive At the Vanguard (2012), Floating (2014), and Sunday Night At The Vanguard (2016) by the group followed, all on Palmetto Records.
For those who lauded Hersch's solo outing, Open Book (Palmetto Records, 2017) as his finest, most incisive and finely-focused outing, the pianist offers up Live In Europe, featuring his Hebert/McPherson team, to garner votes for that "Hersch's Best" slot.
Performed at Flagey Studio 4, in Brussels's former National Institute for Radio Broadcasting, Hersch was initially unaware that the set—which he regarded as one of his best trio performances ever—had been recorded. Upon finding out that it had been—and upon hearing the tape and having his belief in its extraordinary quality confirmed—he decided to release the music.
Spinning through Hersch's previous outings with this nine years and running trio says that they bring the "A" game every time. On Live In Europe it's an "A+" game. The players are as flexibly synchronized and adept at presenting their three-way improvisational and emotional expressionism as they could be, on a set that begins with a jittery take on Thelonious Monk's "We See." The group follows with six Hersch originals, including tributes to British pianist John Taylor and a calypso-esque nod to saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, before slipping into the Herbie Hancock songbook with the achingly beautiful "Miyako," that gives way to an effervescent take on a second Shorter tune, "Black Nile." It's a set where Hersch sounds freer, more open to possibilities, employing the same exploratory approach he presented on the epic "Though The Forest" on his Open Book outing.
And the sound must be addressed. It doesn't get any better—a big plus, especially on piano trio outings. The piano is crisp, like a winter sunrise. Every nuance of McPherson's intricate and energetic drumming has crystal clarity, and Hebert's empathic and emphatic bass lines come through with a clean-cut lucidity.
The show wraps it up with a solo encore of "Blue Monk," a sober and contemplative return to Monk-land, a place to which Hersch often travels.
Track Listing:
Wee See; Snape Maltings; Scuttlers; Skipping; Bristol Fog; Newklypso; The Big Easy; Miyako; Black Nile; Blue Monk.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano; John Hebert: bass; Eric McPherson: drums.

1 Sem 2018 - Part One

Fred Hersch
Open Book



By Dan McClenaghan
In the aftermath of his coma and very possible demise back in 2008, pianist Fred Herschblossomed from a status as a first rate jazz pianist into the rarified air of one of the handful of top practitioners of that art form. A series of post-illness albums, from Whirl(2010), to Alone At The Vanguard (2011) to Floating (2014), Solo (2015) and Sunday Night At the Vanguard (2016), all on Palmetto Records, are all solo and trio outings that reveal a heightened artistic clarity and unabashed vulnerability, alongside a deeper emotive approach, this in comparison to his uniformly excellent, but perhaps more cerebral output before his struggle with serious health problems.
Now we have Open Book, Hersch's eleventh solo piano outing.
Intimacy is a hallmark of Hersch's music, and "The Orb," the set's opener, taken from Hersch's autobiographical music/theater piece, My Coma Dreams, is the tenderest, loveliest of love songs, a look at a paramour through, with justification it seems, rose-colored glasses. "Whisper Not," Benny Golson's classic tune, takes things into a turn of the playful, via crisp, prancing piano notes singing over a serious and assertive left hand. Hersch visits an old friend, Antonio Carlo Jobim, with "Zingaro," a sublime reverie.
The centerpiece, "Through The Forest," is something unheard of on record by Hersch. It's a nineteen minutes-plus, stream-of-consciousness, improvised in-the-moment masterpiece. An ebb and flow dreamscape of sorts—the most fragile of delicacies and the most sacred and quiet moments slipped in beside emphatic percussive energy—music as enchanting as anything the pianist has ever created.
Then in walks Monk. Hersch includes a Thelonious Monk tune in most every set, most every recording. "Eronel" is a spritely interpretation by Hersch, who immerses himself the challenging music deeper than most anybody, peppering the stride-side with sparkling, water-splashing-off-the-rocks sounds, rolling into jagged eddies, leading into the closer, Billy Joel's "And So It Goes," solemn, simple, honest, beautiful.
Honesty—another hallmark of Hersch's art.
This is a recording that makes it seem as though Fred Hersch is the finest jazz pianist in the world. That's an impossible assertion, of course. There are a dozen, maybe more pianists who have achieved this level artistry. But for now, with Open Book, he can wear that title.
Track Listing:
The Orb; Whisper Not; Zingaro; Through the Forest; Plainsong; Eronel; And So It Goes.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano

1 Sem 2017

The Fred Hersch Trio
Sunday Night At The Vanguard



By Dan McClenaghan
Reach up to the CD shelf and pull a handful of Fred HerschCDS down. You'll find that the pianist has a good thing going with the Village Vanguard. Alive At The Vanguard (Palmetto Records, 2012) a stellar two CD set, and terrific solo set, Alone At the Vanguard (Palmetto Records, 2011), are Hersch's most recent recordings from the legendary venue; and now he and his trio offer up Sunday Night At the Vanguard.
Hersch says this is his best trio album. Almost every artist says that about their latest—that this one's the best. But he might be right. The vote here would have gone to a studio recording, Whirl (Palmetto Records, 2010), a marvelous in-the-zone effort with this same trio—John Hebert on bass, Eric McPherson playing drums—until Sunday Night At The Vanguard rolled around.
The trio opens with Richard Rodgers' "A Cockeyed Optimist," which is not exactly a familiar tune, in spite of its authorship. But as an opener it works to perfection, with a silvery, raindrop intro that finds a quirky groove that paints an upbeat atmosphere, with a bright melody that sounds like a second cousin to "It Might As Well Be Spring."
"Serpentine," a Hersch original, is a wandering slither of a tune, unpredictable and spooky, lovely in its fluid, abstract way; "The Optimum Thing" sparkles; and "Blackwing Palomino," maybe the only jazz tune ever written for a pencil, has the feel of a new jazz standard.
Hersch's output has been consistently excellent, but sometimes—as on this special Sunday Night—the stars align. The trio, from the opening notes of "The Cockeyed Optimist," is locked into and to a telepathic interplay zone—playful and eloquent, elegant and assured.
The Lennon and McCartney gem, "For No One," has the forlorn desperation of the song's lyrical content. The Beatles' version—a masterpiece in its own right—didn't take things to this dark of a place.
Kenny Wheeler's "Everybody's Song But My Own" rolls in a restless, jittery mode. "The Peacocks," from the pen of Jimmy Rowles, is pensive, lonely. Hersch explores an almost unmatchable majesty of the tune, with a bit of dissonance, before he jumps into Thelonious Monk, with "We See," an irrepressible jewel, followed—as an encore to the show—the Fred Hersch-penned "Valentine," one of the more inward tunes in Hersch's songbook, counterpointing a mostly gregarious, effervescent set by one of the jazz world's top piano trios at the top of their game.
Track Listing:
A Cockeyed Optimist:Serpentine; The Optimum Thing; Calligram; Blackwing Palomino; For No One; Everybody's Song But My Own; The Peacocks; We See; Solo Encore: Valentine.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano; John Hebert: bass; Eric McPherson: drums.

1 Sem 2016

Fred Hersch
Solo



By Fred Kaplan
With Solo, his 49th album as a leader (or co-leader) and 10th as a soloist, Fred Hersch nails his standing as one of the premier jazz musicians of our time, a pianist of subtle touch and propulsive flow, something like Keith Jarrett but more focused, less rhapsodic—Ravel to KJ's Liszt or Rachmaninoff (not that there's anything wrong with either).
Recorded live last year at the Windham Civic Center Concert Hall, in New York's Hudson Valley, Solo (on the Palmetto label), features, like most of Hersch's albums, a mix of originals and standards—the latter by Jobim, Ellington, Monk, and Joni Mitchell, four composers who have no finer interpreters in jazz today.
Monk is a particularly knotty composer to cover. Most pianists who try either come off as merely imitative (and usually stiff) or go for an original approach that doesn't sound remotely Monkish. Hersch, as he first demonstrated on Thelonious (a 1997 album on Nonesuch), is among the few who mines Monk's essence while refining it in an original voice. He embroiders Jobim with newfound layers of beauty, adds a Latin flavor to Ellington's "Caravan," and lays down Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" with loving (but not at all sentimental) elegance.
I'd say this is Hersch's best solo album since In Amsterdam (2006) or maybe Let Yourself Go (1999).
About the sound quality. A reviewer in one of the other audio magazines (not Stereophile) gave this album 5 stars for sonics, which, I must report, is absurd. It was recorded on a standard 44.1kHz/16-bit CD-R by the Windham Civic Center's sound man (unnamed in the credits), who gave Hersch the disc after the concert. Hersch hadn't planned to release it as an album, but he was so taken by his performance—and so unmoved by a studio session he'd laid down around the same time—that he decided to put out the Windham session, despite the so-so sound. He gave the disc to Mark Wilder, one of the top mastering engineers around, who brought out his bag of tricks and made it sound as good as possible—but good is the best he could do. It's a bit reverberant and a bit muffled, but better than you'd expect from a raw feed off a soundboard. Let's call it 4½ stars for music, 3 stars for sound.
Don't let this put you off, though. The beauty of Hersch's playing shines through.

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

New CD - 2013

Fred Hersch & Julian Lage
Free Flying



By Victor L. Schermer
This album is the latest of several recordings in which pianist Fred Hersch solos or joins forces with some highly intelligent, advanced musicians to provide jazz renditions with a sophisticated, chamber music quality. Others are Hersch's Alone at the Vanguard (Palmetto, 2011); Leaves of Grass (Palmetto, 2005)—an ensemble composition based on Walt Whitman's poems—and two additional solo albums: Fred Hersch plays Jobim (Sunnyside, 2009) and In Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto, 2006). He also collaborated with trumpeter Ralph Alessi on Only Many (Cam Jazz, 2013). On Free Flying, Hersch collaborates with guitarist Julian Lage , who, at 25, has already achieved a performance level which makes a good match for Hersch and challenges him in some respects. Lage was hailed as a guitar prodigy when, at age eight, he was playing with Carlos Santana . He was early attracted to jazz, and by the time he was 13, he had performed with Gary Burton and Herbie Hancock. Since then, he has developed into a top-flight guitarist both as a leader and sideman, and has released his own albums, including Sounding Point (Emarcy, 2009) and Gladwell (Emarcy, 2011) The fate of a musical prodigy depends on whether he can transcend the "genius" stereotype and become a working musician, evolving his own musical idiom; Mozart accomplished this and became a composer for the ages.
Closer to home, guitarist Pat Martino —a slow developer compared to Lage—was playing with top groups in his teens, and went on to become an icon because of his innovative and instantly identifiable approach and sound. Lage has reached the point of mature competence and is now striving to evolve into a true guitar master. This album shows that he has the potential to join that venerated pantheon, along with the likes of Martino. Doing so will depend on live and studio encounters that give him an opportunity to fully develop his own influential idiom. Here, he has already demonstrated his superb craftsmanship and ability to step up and work closely with a master like Hersch; his job is to blend and, in doing so he succeeds supremely well. Only the future will determine whether or not he adds a unique stamp to his guitar playing.
The key element of this outstanding album is the seamless interplay of piano and guitar. Historically, and instrumentally speaking, if you combine a piano and guitar, you get a harpsichord, a keyboard that plucks the strings rather than hammering them. This was the primary keyboard instrument of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, soon to be supplanted, in Bach's time, by the pianoforte—the modern piano. Moreover, Bach owned and wrote several compositions for lauten work, a harpsichord with the softer sound of a lute, a precursor of the guitar.
The historical connection between lute, harpsichord and guitar hovers around this duet collaboration between Hersch and Lage. Moreover, as an important basis of jazz counterpoint, highlighted in the bebop era, it derives from Bach as well. Thus, the musical sensibility of this recording is not unlike Bach's tightly textured yet exploratory "Goldberg Variations," except that Hersch and Lage carve out jazz motifs and modern harmonics. The delight of the music comes from its contrapuntal weaving of themes, and variations so well integrated that, except for the different sonorities, they seem to emanate from one player and instrument. Like Bach and the harpsichord, Hersch and Lage vary dynamics and intensity sparingly. The listening pleasure, of which there is plenty here, comes from the mutual brilliance of execution and the architecture and development of musical ideas. This is co-improvisation taken to the highest level.
The compositions on this album are largely Hersch originals previously recorded in other contexts by the pianist. The two exceptions are "Beatrice" by Sam Rivers and "Monk's Dream," from Thelonious Monk
. The setting is the Kitano jazz club in New York—a small, intimate space with a Steinway piano that has been fingered by some of today's best contemporary jazz pianists, among them Don Friedman , Bill Mays, Roberta Piket and Jim Ridl. The result is studio quality sound with a live ambiance and a touch of emerging jazz history.
The initial track is Hersch's "Song without Words #4: Duet," which evokes a madrigal-like quality, as if it could have been performed on period instruments from the Renaissance. The development has a modal feel, as the lilting melody soon lends itself nicely to a rumba-like dance development. (Hersch often mimes the mix of Latin and stride piano heard in the radio days of the 1920s and '30s.) Lage picks up on Hersch's phrasing, so that piano and guitar interact seamlessly. A natural follow-up is "Down Home," which relaxes into syncopated vaudeville with a ragtime twist. The emphasis on rhythmic patterns characterizes the whole set.
The mood changes significantly with "Heartland," a reflective ballad whose melody is introduced by Lage, providing a contrast to the driving quality of most of the tracks. Hersch gives a sampling of romantic lounge piano playing at its best, with an open, lyrical quality that owes something to the ethereal beauty achieved by the great Bill Evans.
The title tune,"Free Flying" first appeared on Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra Live at the Jazz Standard (Sunnyside, 2009). The percussive, four-bar theme and variations clearly illustrate the Bach influence, as does the repetitive drone-like bass and alternation of unison and counterpoint between the two instruments. Hersch and Lage work so tightly together that sometimes the only way to tell who's playing is by the sound of the instruments.
"Beatrice" a post-bop song by the late great saxophonist Sam Rivers, is one of the most swingable ballads in all of jazz. Here, Hersch and Lage take it at a lively pace, alternating off-beat syncopation with straight-ahead rhythms, releasing themselves from the tight contractions of the other tracks. The rhythm work is more playful, yet a certain tension and holding back of the beat pervade the piece.
As the album proceeds, Hersch gives Lage more room for his own improvisations, and the guitarist is clearly up to the challenge. "Song Without Words #3: Tango" is vaguely reminiscent of "Midnight Sun," with its descending lament motif. It features Lage, and is a perfect foil for him. He develops a blend of tango and blues in single lines resembling some of Pat Martino's best ballad playing, represented for example in the latter's memorable performance of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life."
"Stealthiness" is dedicated to guitarist Jim Hall, possibly with some reference to the ingenuity of his playing, and the duo engages in rough-hewn Monk-ish rhythmic shifts and quizzical phrases. In this track, each player takes solos with the other comping, in contrast to the contrapuntal playing featured elsewhere. Eventually, Hersch leads up to an energetic coda, a quiet release, and a punctuated end. In turn, "Gravity's Pull" continues with the focus on Lage, showing his melodic style. After a quiet beginning, there is a gradual "pull" that develops into some brilliant Bach-inspired counterpoint.
The set ends with "Monk's Dream," with the duo using the Monk tune as a way to play their own version of Monk's punctuations; arrhythmias, and playful use of the upper register. They outdo Monk in eccentricity.
To sum up, Hersch and Lage mesh superbly and have put together a coherent and listenable set of sophisticated improvisations which fuse baroque counterpoint, punctuated rhythms, and diverse jazz motifs in a disciplined yet exciting way. Simply by virtue of the close coordination of piano and guitar and tightness of performance, the album points up the continuity of music from Bach to bop to modernity, and in this respect represents something of a measuring rod for the development of jazz forms.
Track Listing:
Song without Words #4: Duet; Down Home; Heartland; Free Flying; Beatrice; Song Without Words #3: Tango; Stealthiness; Gravity’s Pull; Monk’s Dream.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano; Julian Lage: guitar.