Don't Turn Out The Stars by Michael Jackson

Fred Hersch Don’t Turn Out The Stars
By Michael Jackson – Downbeat Magazine December 2010

There is a scene in David Lean’s 1965 epic movie Dr. Zhivago when Omar Sharif stares at snowflakes on a window of the icebound dacha he will later escape to with Julie Christie. The image comes to mind while listening to Fred Hersch’s tune “Snow Is Falling …,” which the pianist composed at the Pennsylvania woods getaway he shares with his life partner, Scott Morgan. Not only is Hersch’s piano touch crystalline on the piece—which is included on his recent album Whirl (Palmetto)—but so is the thinking
behind it. Although all the tracks on Whirl have the perfectly balanced formation of a Louis Sullivan architectural motif or a honeycombing confection of mother nature’s snowflakes, beyond his compositional conceits Hersch improvises from moment to moment.
“My music can be programmatic, have strong associations,” Hersch says. “‘Skipping’ from Whirl, for example, is about just that act, just as the title track derives from my impressions of dancer Suzanne Farrell. But it’s not overly worked out. I play phrase to phrase, let one voice lead to another, and before long I’ve played a chorus.”
The ingenious communication between right and left hand in Hersch’s playing is deceptively sophisticated, and since he does not give off a bombastic performance style with excess body movement, some may sleep on the brilliance of his conceptions.
Hersch’s discography runs past 100 titles at this point, with three of his own works Grammy nominated. The consistency and variety of his output reveal a driven artist with a singular vision that can be traced back to the very beginnings of his career.
Originally from Cincinnati, Hersch studied at Grinnell College in Iowa for a semester (the same school Herbie Hancock, one of Hersch’s acknowledged influences, attended) and later attended the New England Conservatory during a storied phase when Jaki Byard and Gunther Schuller were on faculty. But he wasn’t one to dwell in academia(despite his later reputation as a mentor), and Hersch moved to New York’s Greenwich Village a week after graduating NEC in 1977. He hung outfrom day one at Bradley’s, the intimate jazz spot run by Bradley Cunningham on University Place, eventually securing a week’s duo residency there, for which he hired legendary bassist Sam Jones. “I was the first young cat who played there,” Hersch remembers. “Sam recommended me to Art Farmer, then I did a forgettable record date with Art and Joe Henderson, and then Joe hired me.” Hersch refers to his years backing Henderson whenever the tenor giant was in New York (between 1980 and 1990) as his “graduate school.” Once he became established with that association, “The real gigs started rolling in,” he says.
Hersch had the wherewithal to involve himself proactively with important progenitors of the music in his formative years, spurred perhaps during lessons and hang sessions with the idiosyncratic piano master Byard at NEC. Hersch pays tribute to Byard with a rendition of the latter’s jaunty blues “Mrs. Parker of K.C.” on Whirl and credits Byard with helping him see the possibilities of solo pianism. Eventually Hersch superseded
Byard’s teaching post at NEC, where he has taught during three separate periods, up to the present. “I was stepping into big shoes when I replaced him,” says Hersch, still relatively young for a veteran at 55. “He was great fun to be with, a wonderful musician and a positive guy. He got me into the older stride pianists, and sometimes I would play in his Apollo Stompers big band while he conducted and played sax.”
Hersch credits Farmer for his taste, discerning setlists (including music from Tom MacIntosh, Paul Bley and Billy Strayhorn) and subtle arranging touches—and also for encouraging him to compose. Henderson was laconic but once advised Hersch when he solicited approval for his sporadic habit of laying out during the set: “Ifyou feel it, that’s probably right; if you ‘think’ it, itprobably isn’t right.”
Despite a wealth of sideman experience—encompassing stints with Toots Thielemans, Jane Ira Bloom, Stan Getz, Billy Harper and Gary Burton, plus accompanying singers such as Norma Winstone, Janis Siegel, Luciana Souza and Nancy King (respective recordings with the latter three receiving Grammy nominations in 1989, 2003 and 2006)—a crucial element in Hersch’s oeuvre has been solo play, for which he has become renowned. Perhaps second in number only to Keith Jarrett, Hersch has many solo piano releases tohis credit, including tributes to Thelonious Monk, Johnny Mandel and Antonio Carlos Jobim and a couple of superb live sets: one at NEC’s Jordan Hall (Nonesuch, 1999), another at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis (Palmetto,2006).
Not unlike one of his classical heroes, Glenn Gould, whom he describes as “intermittently brilliant and frustrating,” Hersch houses an innate self-sustaining momentum in his playing, as well as an expansive imagination that manifests without undue force. As Gould insisted that art is not a “momentary ejection of adrenaline” but “the gradual lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity,” so Hersch commented in Let Yourself Go, a recent film about his life directed by Katja Duregger, that if jazz closes in on itself and becomes overly self-referential, it loses its substance:
“Jazz can be hip guys playing hip music for other hip guys, and that doesn’t work, except for the four thousand hip guys around the world. If you want it to have something to do with life, you have to understand what life is.”
These words carry added import for a man whose own existence was held in the balance recently. Hersch, who came out about having contracted AIDS in 1985, experienced a nasty bout with pneumonia in 2008 that forced him into an induced coma for two months and brought him close to death. The dreams Hersch experienced while in his coma are the source for a major new work from the composer, with a multi-media presentationset to debut in May 2011 at the Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, N.J.
Hersch’s recovery from the coma was far from instantaneous. “I was totally helpless,
couldn’t eat anything for eight months, couldn’t speak for quite a while since one of my vocal chords was paralyzed by a feeding tube,” he said. “I had to undergo extensive physical therapy before I could play—or even walk—again.” Remarkably, Hersch, who managed to overcome an earlier bout with dementia related to his disease, made a full recovery from his pneumonia nightmare. He continues to battle the HIV vírus with a monumental diet of pills that he takes with unerring regularity. In the meantime, in tandem with Morgan, he continues as an activist and money-raiser for AIDS awareness and related causes.
Due to the trepidations of his condition, though under control due to effective meds,
Hersch claims he doesn’t tour internationally as extensively as he might. But he has played almost all the states in the U.S. and has a steady relationship with two top jazz clubs in his hometown, the Jazz Standard and the Village Vanguard. This spring, DownBeat caught up with Hersch’s latest trio at the short-lived Blujazz club in Chicago. Drummer Eric McPherson, who has taken over Nasheet Waits’ chair in the group, and bassist John Hébert proved acutely attentive to the pianist’s peregrinations. Hersch’s Blujazz set included, as it nearly always does, a Monk tune (“I Mean You”) and some Wayne Shorter, in this case “Black Nile” and Hersch’s original “Still Here,” written with Shorter in mind but now vested with pertinence to Hersch’s own survival. Ballads, unsurprisingly, were in abundance, including “The Man I Love” and Hersch’s “Close Of The Day,” which he composed as part of his expanded work in celebration of Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass (Palmetto, 2005), plus “Sad Poet,” his paean to Jobim. More surprising was a rambunctious take on Ornette Coleman’s “Forerunner,” plus a conflation of “Lonely Woman” and Bill Evans’ favorite set-closer, “Nardis.”
Hersch has drawn from a deep well of repertoire over the years. A self-confessed tune freak, he is as likely to take inspiration from the ideas of horn players as pianists. He played a set of tunes associated with Sonny Rollins at a ceremony celebrating the tenor saxophonist’s award of the MacDowell Medal over the summer, a brief respite from five weeks’ seclusion at the MacDowell artists colony in New Hampshire, where
Hersch focused on music to match the visuals and libretto for his Coma Dreams project.
Au fait with the work of Egberto Gismonti and a fan of Argentinian classical pianist Martha Argerich, Hersch is also a Joni Mitchell geek. He recorded Mitchell’s “My Old Man” years before Herbie Hancock zeroed in on the Mitchell Canon and hasn’t enough good things to say about the singer. “Nobody sets text like Joni Mitchell, period,” Hersch says. “She is one of the great poets as well as an incredible singer; you get every note, every nuance. She’s a goddess, pretty much.”
The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, Hersch wrote a orgeously melodic bop contrafact on the changes to “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” in honor of alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, dubbed “Lee’s Dream,” which can be heard on both the highly creative duo álbum This We Know (Palmetto, 2008) with saxophonist Michael Moore and the quintet outing Fred Hersch Trio + 2 (Palmetto, 2004). The latter recording features Hersch’s then-trio of Waits and bassist Drew Gress augmented with trumpeter Ralph Alessi and saxophonist Tony Malaby. It’s a good place to get a handle on Hersch’s writing concepts for small group, since the CD contains nine originals drawing inspiration from such musicians as saxophonist/educator Allan Chase and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. There is the deployment of onomatopoeia, as in the case of “Snow Is Falling …,” with the dancing precipitation of the keys and dripping bass ostinato behind “Rain Waltz,” odd-measured blues played in the round, tunes composed of exclusively minor chords or perfect fifths—lots of ideas, all evidence of Hersch’s curiosity and ongoing musical research.
Those who bracket Hersch as an incorrigible romantic might be surprised at his dabblings with humor. “Nostalgia” from the 2006 Chesky compilation Personal Favorites sounds like Holland’s ICP Orchestra or even Spike Jones, and after all, this is a pianist who appreciates the playfulness of Monk. “Stuttering” from Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra Live At The Jazz Standard (Sunnyside, 2009)—featuring his quartet with Alessi, singer Jo Lawry and percussionist Richie Barshay—could be interpreted as an updating of Monk’s clangy, unapologetic metric dicings and free-ranging aesthetic.
Not to overlook a happy partnership with the Jazz Standard (where he selected the piano and has launched his more innovative aggregations, including several high-wire duo invitation series), Hersch has a special relationship with the Vanguard, evidenced by three weeklong bookings there this year alone (in January, July and December). “I was the first pianist booked to play solo there for a whole week,” Hersch states with understandable pride.
Bassist Hébert was delighted to accompany him in the hallowed room. “Some of the Best moments for me with Fred were during two weeks at the Vanguard, both trio weeks, one with Eric McPherson and the other with Billy Hart,” Hébert says. “Standing so close to Fred, nearly playing acoustically, I was able to really hear his touch. Even at his weakest, not having played the piano in weeks, he is able to draw a sound out of the piano that is unique to him. “There are so many pianists who can ‘play’ the instrument, but not many who can get a sound out of it, on whatever piano is available, like Fred,” Hébert continues. “It goes beyond the great content of what he plays. It is that sound I am attracted to. Lush and beautiful, seemingly effortless.”
The individuality of Hersch’s approach, not grandly posterized, is something blue-chip musicians are more attuned to than the cursory listener. “It’s the way Fred phrases and the rhythms that he uses,” says pianist Kenny Barron, Who identified Hersch in a live DownBeat Blindfold Test presented at this year’s Detroit International Jazz Festival. “That’s what gets me—how He plays the rhythms in his left hand.”
Ambidextrous ability in contrary motion is deftly demonstrated by Hersch to an incredulous student at Western Michigan University in the Let Yourself Go DVD; it is something he has taught, by example, at the various academic institutions with which he has been affiliated.
Hersch students who have gone on to acclaim include Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus’ Ethan Iverson. Mehldau’s contrapuntal left-hand facility is a feature of his playing that could be attributed to the Hersch influence. After teaching Iverson privately for several years during his time at NYU, Hersch referred him to Sophia Rossoff, his own mentor, now 90 but a continuing source of wisdom and insight. “I’m sure many of Fred’s fans react immediately to his touch, which is connected to the piano, not with just his fingers but his whole body,” said Iverson. Subtle physical responses guide Hersch forward in his improvisations. It’s what Jarrett recently termed a kind of “bio feedback” from the hands. Hersch prefers an analogy to tennis. “It’s like Roger Federer when he is in the zone, and unstoppable,” Hersch says. “There’s nothing between you and ‘it,’ the game; you are totally connected.”
Hersch hasn’t regarded himself as an artiste exclusively. For a while he was a “player”
or a sideman, and in the pre-MIDI 1980s he ran his own recording studio out of his downtown apartment, invoicing for sessions, making coffee for clients, taking the console apart, even ejecting the odd junky musician from the bathroom. Nowadays he can pick and choose the nicer gigs and say “no” when the circumstances aren’t right, a great privilege for the jazz professional.
He realizes he lacks the looks, the showbiz acumen, the X-factor to command big outdoor festival stages like Joe Lovano, the Yellowjackets or Esperanza Spalding—or at least he is not snowed with such offers—but Hersch is more than content with the second lease on life that has afforded him a deeper focus on personal and universal essences. He’s far from ready for the lights to go out again.
“I certainly feel a lot more grateful than entitled,” he says.

Discography - Part 8

Rénee Fleming with Fred Hersch & Bill Frisell
Haunted Heart



By Stephen Latessa
Track Listing:

Haunted Heart; River; When Did You Leave Heaven; You've Changed; Answer Me; My Cherie Amour; In My Life; The Moon's A Harsh Mistress; Wozzeck/Improvisation/The Midnight Sun; Liebst du um Schonheit; My One And Only Love/This Is Always; Cancao do Amor; Psyche; Hard Times Come Again No More.
Personnel:

Renee Fleming: vocals; Fred Hersch: piano; Bill Frisell: guitar.

My utter and lamentable ignorance of opera leaves me unable to fully grasp the esteem with which Renée Fleming is held. However, on Haunted Heart, Fleming takes temporary leave of the opera world for pop pastures. Such crossover attempts constitute a mini-genre, albeit one with an almost unbroken string of ill-advised efforts (see the Placido Domingo/John Denver summit Perhaps Love). Inevitably the marketing campaign will urge the undecided buyer to "experience love by plunking down a few bucks for a disc packaged with high-gloss glamour shots of the artist reclining on an artfully arranged swell of throw pillows.
Haunted Heart features the requisite photos, but more importantly the presence of two ringers in guitarist Bill Frisell and pianist Fred Hersch. Frisell in particular shines with his work on a perfectly realized, old-fashioned rendition of "When Did You Leave Heaven. Equally accomplished, but existing on an opposite emotional spectrum is his atmospheric, devastating work on "Answer Me.
Fleming's work on the album's pop-oriented material is unsurprisingly technically flawless, but also somehow off. She sings in a deep, husky voice far removed from her more familiar soprano and even she seems sometimes surprised by the novelty. Her performance is somehow both showy and stiff, straining to add some "authentic grit and managing to evoke exactly the opposite.
It is not surprising that her reading of Mahler's "Liebst du um Schonheit is the most comfortable performance on the album. She sounds at home, hitting every line with precision. Also stirring is her take on Stephen Foster's classic "Hard Times Come Again No More, which benefits from a less histrionic approach—until nearly the end, when there is a more concerted effort to belt it out.
Haunted Heart is a fine document of identity crisis. The shift from classic pop standards to classical art songs, folk laments, and '60s/'70s singer-songwriter fare seems less evidence of eclecticism than uncertainty. The changes in Fleming's voice depending on the material further underscore her lack of comfort with most of what she is attempting. No doubt she is a great talent, but trying to be what she is not does her no favors.


Jeri Brown & Fred Hersch
Mirage

by Scott Yanow
On her first recording as a jazz singer, Jeri Brown really stretches herself. Joined by pianist Fred Hersch and bassist Daniel Lessard, Brown interprets everything from a swinging "No Moon at All," "Good Bait," and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" to "The Look of Love" and a long free improvisation duet with Hersch called "Ten Twenty" (after its length). Brown is best when she is caressing a warm ballad, for on the freer material her singing gets quite abrasive and is sometimes difficult to take. She would temper her excesses in future years and become one of the top jazz singers around, so Mirage is mostly recommended as the beginning point for this top-notch singer.


Leny Andrade & Fred Hersch
Maiden Voyage



by Ken Dryden
Leny Andrade is considered one of the top Brazilian singers, but she has had relatively little exposure in North America. Fred Hersch, the pianist on these 1993 studio sessions, was introduced to her as she joined Toots Thielemans on-stage during a South American tour and has sung her praises ever since; joining them are bassist David Dunaway and drummer Hélio Schiavo. Her husky but consistently swinging vocals carry a delightful take of "This Can't Be Love," where she also scats up a storm. Hersch's touching arrangement of "My Funny Valentine" is perfect for her dramatic interpretation of this timeless ballad. She scats her way through a stunning take of "Maiden Voyage." But the main focus of this release is on music from Latin America, in which she obviously excels after several decades as a professional vocalist, ranging from "Dindi" to more recent works like Ivan Lins' "Vela Icadas." This Chesky CD is one of the few opportunities for those living outside South America to hear this seasoned vocalist.


Janis Siegel & Fred Hersch
Slow Hot Wind



by Scott Yanow
Singer Janis Siegel (taking time off from The Manhattan Transfer) and pianist Fred Hersch make for a complementary team on this CD, supporting and occasionally challenging each other. The sources of the compositions they interpret (many are of fairly recent vintage) stretch from Sting and Stevie Wonder to Johnny Mercer and there are quite a few middle-of-the-road pop ballads although Siegel gets to break loose on "Moon and Sand." But overall this well-played and often impressionistic music is consistently melancholy, a bit dull and often outside of jazz without all that much improvisating taking place.


Janis Siegel & Fred Hersch
Short Stories



by Ken Dryden
Although singer Janis Siegel is best known as a member of the Manhattan Transfer, her recordings under her own name, particularly those made with pianist Fred Hersch, best showcase her abilities. This is their first of several collaborations between the two, and it concentrates more heavily on modern pop songs rather than standards. The haunting bittersweet ballad "Invisible War" (written by singer Julia Fordham) features an emotional vocal by "Siegel" that is enriched by Hersch's inventive accompaniment. They are just as effective interpreting works by James Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Joni Mitchell, or Judy Collins. The standards include a moving renditions of "The Meaning of the Blues" and "Never Let Me Go." Jazz compositions include David Frishberg's lively "Zanzibar" and Hersch's lovely "A Dance for Me (Rain Waltz)," which is a bit overdone with an overdubbed backing vocal. This 1989 CD has been out of print for some time, but it is well worth seeking.


Jane Ira Bloom & Fred Hersch
As One



by Scott Yanow
The inventive soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom performs a set of duets with the adaptable and complementary pianist Fred Hersch. They play two originals apiece (including Hersch's "Janeology"), collaborate on "Inside," and perform a song apiece by Wayne Shorter ("Miyako") and Alec Wilder. The improvisations are generally melodic but unpredictable, coherent but fairly free. Worth several listens.


Nancy King & Fred Hersch
Live At Jazz Standard



by Ken Dryden
It's no wonder that Fred Hersch had the confidence to tape his initial meeting with Nancy King. King is one of the best jazz vocalists of her generation, though she is unjustly not as widely recognized as a number of major-label artists who don't begin to compare with her. King and Hersch put together a wide-ranging program at the Jazz Standard, frequently extending their interpretations well beyond the expectations for a vocal/piano duo. Hersch, who has long since proved his abilities as a solo accompanist for singers (especially Janis Siegel), is never less than brilliant throughout the evening, though the singer is equally impressive, an adventurous spirit who is unafraid of taking chances. King's expressive voice is full of humor in the swinging take of "Ain't Misbehavin'," while she scats up a storm in Antonio Carlos Jobim's neglected gem "If You Never Come to Me." She's equally inspired as she revives once popular standards that have fallen out of favor like "There's a Small Hotel" and "Everything Happens to Me." But the finale clearly steals the show as King devours "Four" whole, throwing caution to the wind as she playfully adds her own twists to Jon Hendricks' vocalese setting of Miles Davis' famous tune. This beautifully recorded set is a tribute to the musicianship of both artists, as well as the foresight of Fred Hersch to request that the soundboard operator record it without notifying Nancy King in advance.

Discography - Part 7

Fred Hersch
Point In Time



by Ken Dryden
One of the busiest and most dependable musicians of the '90s, pianist Fred Hersch delivers another strong performance with Point in Time, mixing standards, choice jazz classics, and his own creative originals. His trio with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Tom Rainey is featured on four tracks; highlights include his moving rendition of "The Peacocks" and a driving original, "Cat's Paws," dedicated to the late promising pianist Dave Catney who died a few months before these sessions. Tenor saxophonist Rich Perry is featured on the delicate arrangement of "Infant Eyes," while trumpeter Dave Douglas joins Hersch on the pianist's melancholy but insistent "Too Soon." The full quintet is featured on several songs, including the pianist's pulsating post bop title track as well as on "Evidence," which captures the playfulness of its composer, Thelonious Monk. Recommended.


Fred Hersch & Jay Clayton
Beautiful Love



by Dave Nathan
Jay Clayton has been a leader in applying avant-garde, creative modern techniques to the art of jazz vocal. She has been successful in this commendable objective ever since her first album as a solist in 1980, where a 25-year-old Jane Ira Bloom was a major partner. Although working with a play list of classic standards, except for Wayne Shorter's jazz standard "Footprints," Clayton has by no means set aside her modern jazz vocal leanings. Joined by Fred Hersch a pianist with like perspectives, they work in tandem to present this familiar music in an offbeat non-familiar way. This is not to say that lovely melody lines are lost among cacophonies of grunts, groans, and other extra terrestrial events. The lyrical lines are there, but the tempo, the phrasing, the emphasis has been rearranged so the light of these tunes is refracted through a prism rather than through a window of ordinary glass. Full fledged avant-garde comes, as one would expect, on Shorter's "Footprints," where Clayton engages in wordless vocalizing reminiscent of the vocal part in Hector Villa-Lobas "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5," with Hersch doing a marvelous job replacing the cellos as the voice accompaniment. This is seven minutes of remarkable virtuosity. "Regular" standards, such as "Blame It on My Youth," are treated with respect as Clayton plays little games with the melody line and chordal structure and inserts wordless vocalizing here and there. "Beautiful Love" is introduced slowly by Clayton a cappella before moving into a medium lilting tempo. Not much here ever gets beyond that pace. This album is thoughtful and is for those who want to hear the full measure of a song, with nothing skipped, casually dismissed, or unknowingly overlooked. Highly recommended.


Fred Hersch
Evanessence: A Tribute To Bill Evans



By Alex Henderson
Initially released in Japan in 1990, Evanessence didn't come out in the U.S. until the Philadelphia-based Evidence Music reissued it in 1998. This excellent CD finds Hersch (who evolved into one of the finest acoustic pianists of the 1990s) paying tribute to the person he has been compared to more than anyone: Bill Evans. To be sure, Evans has had a major impact on Hersch's crystalline, elegant pianism. But Hersch (whose other main influences include Ahmad Jamal and Keith Jarrett) is far from a slavish imitator of Evans, and the fact that he's very much his own person comes through on both Evans' compositions (including "Turn Out the Stars," "We Will Meet Again" and "Remembering the Rain") and sensitive interpretations of "Alice in Wonderland" and "You Must Believe in Spring." Though Hersch's admiration for Evans (especially his 1970s work) is hard to miss, he comes across as someone who's adamant about being himself. The pianist's thoughtful accompaniment includes Toots Thielemans on harmonica, Gary Burton on vibes, Michael Formanek or Marc Johnson on bass and Jeff Hirshfield on drums. Highly recommended.

Discography - Part 6

The Fred Hersch Ensemble
Leaves of Grass

by Matt Collar
Leaves of Grass finds pianist Fred Hersch and a stellar ensemble of musicians performing Walt Whitman's classic poetry to music. Hersch has long displayed an organic mix of Keith Jarrett's blissed-out focus, Bill Evans' epic patience, and Tommy Flanagan's straight-ahead sense of swing. Combine all that with a deft post-bop harmonicism, classically trained technique, and finally the epic poetry of Walt Whitman and you get this gorgeously cerebral album. Interestingly, Hersch has apple picked from various parts of Leaves of Grass, only including certain parts that truly spoke to him. The result is a semi-classical-sounding oratorio that makes room for spoken word sections, sections done in vocalized song, and outright improvisation. Giving life to Whitman's actual words are singers Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry, who instill each phrase with precision and eloquence. Similarly, Hersch's backing ensemble, including trumpeter Ralph Alessi, tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, trombonist Mike Christianson, clarinetist Bruce Williamson, cellist Erik Friedlander, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer John Hollenbeck, helps deliver an atmospheric and nuanced backdrop for Whitman's poetry. Hersch's Leaves of Grass will certainly not be to everyone's taste -- poetry and jazz rarely are -- however, as an exercise in combining the two mediums, Hersch has not only succeeded, but also created one of the best albums of his career.


Fred Hersch
Red Square Blue: Jazz Impressions of Russian Composers



by Scott Yanow
This is an unusual set. Pianist Fred Hersch explores music by Mussorgsky, Gliere, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Liadov and Rachmaninoff, performing jazz improvisations while being respectful to the original themes. With the assistance of bassist Steve La Spina, drummer Jeff Hershfield and (on various tracks) flutist James Newton, Toots Thielemans on harmonica, altoist Phil Woods (also heard on clarinet) and cellist Erik Frieldander, Hersch brings out some unexpected beauty in the melodies. This CD is a follow-up to a 1989 disc (Jazz Impressions) on which Hersch and a similar group played their interpretations of themes by French (rather than Russian) classical composers.


The Fred Hersch Group
Forward Motion



by Scott Yanow
This subtle set sneaks up on the listener, gradually building in tension and excitement. Pianist Fred Hersch varies the instrumentation on many of the tracks (only six of his originals use the full group) and the CD starts off with several quiet selections. But just as one thinks that they know what to expect on the rest of the session, up pops "Janeology" (a tribute to Jane Ira Bloom that is a rather spaced-out performance based on "Confirmation") and a driiving piece dedicated to Joe Henderson, "Phantom of the Bopera" (great title!). Using tenor saxophonist Rich Perry, cellist Erik Friedlander, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey in different settings (including an unusual cello-piano-percussion trio on "Frevo"), Fred Hersch is heard throughout the continually surprising date playing at the top of his form.


Fred Hersch
4 in Perspective



by Ken Dryden
Four in Perspective is actually the name of the group featured on this CD, featuring an incredible concert by pianist Fred Hersch, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, vocalist Norma Winstone, and percussionist Paul Clarvis. Though Hersch had previously worked with Wheeler and had long admired Winstone, Clarvis was new to him and it was clear early on during the rehearsal prior to the concert that the performance had to be recorded. The evening is nothing short of stunning, with Hersch's lyrical piano and inviting compositions, Winstone's warm, unpretentious vocals, and the letter-perfect seasoning provided by Wheeler and Clarvis. Winstone penned the lyrics to the pianist's haunting opener, "Sarabande," while also writing words to Wheeler's shimmering ballad "Wintersweet." "Out Some Place (Blues for Matthew Shepard)" is a movement from a larger dance score by Hersch, a lonely, provocative blues in memory of a young gay man who was severely beaten and left to freeze to death tied to a fence in rural Wyoming. Winstone penned lyrics to Jimmy Rowles' signature ballad "The Peacocks" (renamed "A Timeless Place"); Winstone and Hersch rekindle the magic in a stunning duet. Hersch's quirky "Janeology" is suggestive of Ornette Coleman with its jagged melody, while "Four Improvisations" is a provocative, somewhat eerie group improvisation. The band's spacious, campy treatment of Eubie Blake's "Memories of You" wraps the concert on a humorous note. Released in the U.K., this somewhat hard to find CD is well worth tracking down.


Fred Hersch
The Duo Album



by Ken Dryden
Fred Hersch's second CD intended to raise money for HIV/AIDS service, education and prevention programs is well worth the investment. The pianist chose 12 classic songs and accompanied a dozen different talented musicians, including Jim Hall, Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, Gary Burton, and Janis Siegel, to name a few. All of the music is magical, no matter who is in the studio. The brilliant but modest pianist let the tapes roll without rehearsals or arrangements. Available exclusively through Classical Action by phone.

Discography - Part 5

Fred Hersch
The French Collection



by Ken Dryden
French Impressionists in a jazz setting. Generally playing each piece as it was initially conceived, Fred Hersch builds upon the structure of each of the 11 timeless melodies, producing a number of stimulating improvisations. Joined by a rhythm section consisting of bassist Steve LaSpina, and drummer Joey Baron, (with Jeff Hirschfield taking his place on the final selection), Hersch adds a special guest on seven tracks. James Newton's haunting flute is the focal point of Debussy's Prelude from Suite Bergamasque, while Kevin Eubanks' acoustic guitar shares the spotlight with the leader in Ravel's 1st Movement (Modere) from Sonatine. Harmonica great Toots Thielemans is dazzling in the waltz-time treatment of Sonatine by Fauré. Hersch beat Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone to the punch by a dozen years with his virtuoso trio adaptation of Ravel's "Prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin." Clarinetist Eddie Daniels is a bit too close to the mic during Fauré's Apres un Reve; his gasps for air between passages are distracting, though his performance is flawless. This recommended CD is an excellent tool to get fans of one genre of music exposed to the other, though it may be tough to acquire, since it is no longer in print.


Fred Hersch
ETC



by Ken Dryden
This trio session is a bit unusual for Fred Hersch because it doesn't feature any of his own works, but his inspired choice of music and interesting arrangements make this trio session one worth acquiring. Joined by bassist Steve La Spina and drummer Jeff Hirschfield, he explores such classic jazz compositions as Wayne Shorter's "Black Nile," which is played with fire, the uptempo Sam Jones blues "Unit Seven," and Miles Davis' "All Blues," which is given a swirling piano introduction in a brisk arrangement. Hersch also caresses Cole Porter's masterful ballad "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye."


Fred Hersch Trio
Heartsongs



by Ken Dryden
Before Fred Hersch's star rose during the 1990s, resulting in several Grammy nominations, he was quietly establishing himself as one of the most lyrical up-and-coming pianists, as he demonstrates on these 1989 studio sessions. Accompanied by bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jeff Hirschfield, he surprises the listener right away with a fresh approach to the oft-heard standard "The Man I Love," gliding over Hirschfield's adept brushwork and Formanek's soft, spacious bassline. Wayne Shorter's "Infant Eyes" also benefits from Hersch's minimalist approach, shimmering in an arrangement in which the leader and the bassist alternate solos. But Hersch best demonstrates his considerable gifts as a composer. "Heartsong" is a captivating work that he has sometimes played in a solo setting, though this trio version proves to be explosive. "Evanessence" is a gorgeous tribute to the late Bill Evans, with a superb solo by Formanek reminiscent of Scott LaFaro's fleet performances with Evans. Although Fred Hersch has made released many memorable CDs since this Sunnyside release, this fine effort is also well worth investigating.


Fred Hersch
Sarabande



by Scott Yanow
Teamed up in a trio with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Joey Baron, pianist Fred Hersch is heard on this date exploring the modern mainstream of jazz. His thoughtful and exploratory solos on such numbers as Ornette Coleman's "Enfant," Jimmy Rowles' "The Peacocks," "What Is This Thing Called Love," "Blue In Green" and three of his own originals (including the title cut) are full of subtle and generally swinging surprises. This CD is a fine example of Fred Hersch's playing.


Fred Hersch
ETC plus One



by Ken Dryden
The second CD by the post-bop trio ETC (bassist Steve La Spina, pianist Fred Hersch, and drummer Jeff Hirschfield) adds tenor saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi. Bergonzi, an always dependable player and imaginative writer, contributed three of the nine originals heard on the date, including two takes of the furious roller coaster-like "Splurge," the loping "Hank," and the driving "Conclusive Evidence." Hersch's understated tribute to pianist Bill Evans, "Evanessence" (previously recorded as the title track to an earlier CD for Jazz City), is a prominent feature for La Spina's strong chops; his rapid fire "Phantom of the Bopera" and lyrical ballad "Days Gone By" also serve to inspire the group. La Spina also wrote three numbers: the easygoing bossa nova "Once More," the mournful ballad "Without You," as well as the intense samba-flavored "April Nights." The lack of liner notes explaining the history of the group (this was their final collaboration) is disappointing, but that is the only reservation about this very enjoyable release.

Discography - Part 4

Fred Hersch
I Never Told You: Fred Hersch Plays Johnny Mandel




by Ken Dryden
During the 1990s, many jazz musicians considered Johnny Mandel as one of the greatest living composers, but this solo outing by Fred Hersch is one of the few releases that sticks exclusively to his compositions. The pianist doesn't just stick to Mandel's best known works; the somewhat dark "Moon Song" receives its recording debut here, while the mood is also bittersweet in his interpretation of "I Never Told You." The influence of Thelonious Monk is immediately obvious in the delightful "Sure as You're Born." It was difficult for the pianist to choose among the many standards written by Mandel, but Hersch's upbeat take of "A Time for Love," his very sparse deliberate arrangement of "Emily," and a brisk reading of "Close Enough for Love" all stand apart from approaches typically utilized by jazz musicians. But Hersch's most captivating interpretation of Mandel's music is his duo piano version of "Seascape," which he created by overdubbing a second track. All in all, this is a superb release that can especially benefit those new to jazz; the combination of a master composer and an inspired interpreter make for enjoyable listening.


Fred Hersch
Concert Music 2001-2006




By Blogcitics
Fred Hersch may be the best post-Bill Evans jazz pianist performing. He has effectively extended Evans’ piano language to jazz areas Evans could never reach (Thelonious Monk, for example). Hersch is a master of the jazz ballad in the same way the late Gene Harris was the master of the blues. He is also an accomplished thematic composer as illustrated in his settings for Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (Palmetto, 2005).
Like all jazz, Hersch’s best playing is live as testified by, In Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto, 2005) and Live at the Village Vanguard (Palmetto, 2003). His playing and arrangement style is characterized by precision and acute attention to tonal detail. While Fred Hersch is certainly a musical impressionist, his impressionism is digital.
Hersch has now left the field of improvisation for what he terms “Concert Music,” that is, “modern classical music.” Concert Music 2001-2006 contains the first fully notated music composed by Hersch. While the piano is central to all of the compositions herein, Hersch demonstrates a command of multiple musical styles.
Hersch’s “Three Character Studies” are moody romantic pieces that recall Liszt’s transcription of Schubertlieder – heavy left hand filigreed with ornate right hand triplets. “24 Variations on a Bach Chorale” (after “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” from St. Matthew Passion sounds roundly American in the same way that Virgil Thompson and Aaron Copland do in their respective treatments of familiar tunes.
The Bach variations show Hersch’s well anointed tonal horizon as he modulates harmonically, melodically, and in tempi. All of the variations remain distinctly recognizable. “Lyric Pieces for Trio” displays Hersch’s ability to compose foe ensembles, whetting the listener’s appetite for more elaborate Hersch compositions for larger ensembles. Hersh’s most intense Americana is reserved for his “Saloon Songs” which update the ragtime paradigm right into the 21st Century.
Track Listing:
Three Character Studies: No. 1. Nocturne for Left Hand Alone (for Sophia) - Natasha Paremski; No. 2. Little Spinning Song (for Penny) - Natasha Paremski; No. 3. Chorinho; (Study in Thirds and Sixths) (for Spike) Natasha Paremski; 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale - Blair McMillen; Lyric Piece - Gramercy Trio; Tango Bittersweet - Dorothy Lawson; Saloon Songs: No. 1. Four-Part Slow Drag - Blair McMillen; No. 2. The "Last Call" Waltz - Blair McMillen; No. 3. The Bowery Rag - Blair McMillen.



Fred Hersch & Norma Winstone
Songs and Lullabies



by Judith Schlesinger
This is a deeply romantic CD, but not the fluffy kind: its music and words are powerful and introspective, rather than syrupy or sentimental. Fred Hersch has recorded with many fine vocalists -- Janis Siegel, Meredith d'Ambrosio, Barbara Sfraga, and Luciana Souza among them -- but this is the first time these 11 compositions are all his own, with lyrics and vocals by Azimuth co-founder Norma Winstone. Her words are intelligent and poetic, perfectly fitted to Hersch's lush melodies, and she sings with soul and grace. The songs span two decades, from Hersch's '80s trademarks "Heartsong" and "Sarabande" to recent work like the transcendentally beautiful "Endless Stars" -- which becomes "Stars" here, and also appears on his recent trio CD, Live at the Village Vanguard. Master vibist Gary Burton joins the duo on three tracks; his interplay with Hersch on "A Wish" is particularly delicious, like two fast-flowing streams tumbling and sparkling in the sun. Winstone turns the familiar "Heartsong" into "Song of Life," a purely joyful celebration. Aside from the banquet of Hersch's incomparable lyricism, there's also humor in the Monk-ish "The Eighth Deadly Sin" (procrastination) where Winstone brilliantly describes the agony of approaching a creative deadline. Songs and Lullabies offers an intimate yet universal journey, full of wistful meditations on love; warmly recorded, it's a must for fans of Hersch and Winstone and aficionados of the highest levels of jazz piano and musicianship. This CD is life-affirming, inspiring, gorgeous, and highly recommended.



Fred Hersch
Live At Maybeck Recital Hall, Vol. 31




by Richard S. Ginell
Fred Hersch's first solo recital came about thanks to -- what else? -- the Maybeck Recital Hall series, which devotes Vol. 31 to his survey of several well-worn pop standards, a few jazz tunes, and a couple of originals. Luckily, Hersch likes to use a percussive form of counterpoint often enough to juice things up, a plan that launches "The Song Is You" and "Everything I Love" in unorthodox fashion. "In Walked Bud," an inventive takeoff on Monk's own stabbing manner, is also clever in its spiky, asymmetrical way. The opening and ending of "Haunted Heart" work well with a nostalgic drone in the bass, and Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'" gets a gospel-influenced workout that fans of Keith Jarrett's early solo concerts would appreciate. As for the two Hersch originals, "Heartsong" is ebullient and romantic at the same time, while "Sarabande" concentrates solely upon lyricism. In other words, another classy, technically unimpeachable, spotlessly recorded outing in the Maybeck series.



The Fred Hersch Trio
Live At The Village Vanguard



By Mark Corroto
Track Listing:

Bemsha Swing; At the Close of the Day; Phantom of the Bopera; Endless Stars; Swamp Thang; Stuttering; Some Other Time; Days Gone By; Miyako/Black Nile; I'll Be Seeing You.
Personnel:

Fred Hersch: piano; Drew Gress: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums.
Pianist Fred Hersch starts off this live set unaccompanied, playing a version of Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” in a ‘smarty-pants-deconstructed-chamber-post-modernism’ style. As we all know, Monk has never been about high mindedness, and Hersch lets you know he knows just that. Just as his rhythm partners kick in, he shakes off Carnegie Hall for a true New York experience that is a basement known as the Village Vanguard. He plays a little back-and-forth with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, rolling up his sheets and getting his hands dirty. Ah yes, that’s Monk dancing beside the pianist and this trio is the real deal.
Hersch has taken on Mr. Monk before, with an entire disc’s worth of music. The 1998 Thelonious (Nonesuch) was at times more Bill Evans than Thelonious Monk. Likewise his Evanessence (Evidence 1998) was pure delight for fans. Where some of his studio dates seem too ‘perfect,’ all of his live discs Let Yourself Go (1999) and Live At Maybeck (1993) are vivacious and full of spirit.
These live sessions from May of last year find Hersch mixing things up to great effect. He knows how to heat things up as with the burning “Phantom Of The Bopera” where Nasheet Waits applies a massive drums solo. Then change into his sentimentalist Bill Evans clothes, plying the melancholy to Sammy Cahn’s “Some Other Time.” Throughout, the emotion is real. Hersch can take you from a tentative New Orleans funky “Swamp Thing” that turns into an all-out blues tune or plaster a hard bop wallop.
The trio covers Wayne Shorter’s “Miyako/Black Nile” with a pragmatic, matter-of-fact approach. Shorter’s intricate compositions only bare fruit in the hands of master musicians. Here, Hersch and company patiently wade through the tune with an exposed vulnerable touch segued by Waits’ rolling solo into a dexterous finale.
The set ends with the standard “I’ll Be Seeing You,” played with just enough syrup to make it tasteful. Hersch’s trio made magic in the center of the jazz universe for this recording.

Discography - Part 3

Fred Hersch, Michael Moore, Gerry Hemingway
Thirteen Ways



by Michael G. Nastos
Put pianist Fred Hersch, clarinetist Michael Moore, and percussionist Gerry Hemingway together in a setting where anything goes, and you get three improvisational masters coming together as one, and playing it many more than Thirteen Ways. This trio collectively perform chamber-like jazz with traditional flair, harmonic character, and a united intent of purpose. The middle of the CD features a series of duets: the lower-dynamic clarinet and piano conversation "I Connected," the dancing steel drum and clarinet in "Steel & Clarinet" (a liltingly lovely alto sax and piano take on the standard "Speak Low"), and the kinetic, bouncy and fluid piano and drum kit treatment of "Star Eyes," with a calypso drum solo. The title track is a 16-plus-minute tour de force magnum opus that is divided into 13 sections, each inspired by individual poems that were attached to the score. It ranges from broodingly dark, two-chord piano, vibrant clarinet solo, furious clarinet and piano, solo piano, more steel drums, overblown bass clarinet, modal piano, fluttering clarinet, and Steve Reich-like minimal piano. The finest of Hersch's writing comes out on "Swamp Thang," with the slinkiest, sneakiest, snake-like clarinet and piano line, with wondrous brush work, and deserving of a big-time wow! "Brunheiras" is more a rubato ballad merging to a 6/8 figure, Moore again sounding a bird-like fluttering, while other standards, such as Monk's "Boo Boo's Birthday," and Jelly Roll Morton's "Mr. Jelly Lord" are done quite faithfully, singing with a respect worthy of aThanksgiving repast. Hersch fans will be pleasantly surprised by this effort, people who know Moore from his work with Clusone Trio will summarily be anxious to own this, and Hemingway, at the top of his game, can really do no wrong with this infinitely expressive combo. Highly recommended.


Fred Hersch
Plays Rodgers & Hammerstein





by Scott Yanow
Fred Hersch grew up loving the show tunes of Rodgers & Hammerstein, so he took advantage of the opportunity to pay tribute to the songwriters. This solo piano set mixes together some standards (most notably "It Might As Well Be Spring" and "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top") with some lesser-known but worthwhile tunes, including "Loneliness of Evening" and "I Have Dreamed." Hersch's harmonically advanced yet melodic style transforms even the most unlikely tunes into high-quality jazz.


Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra
Live At Jazz Standard




by Michael G. Nastos
Ever the restless artist, pianist Fred Hersch wastes no time moving from one project to another. But he's termed this one "unintentional", having played with his "Pocket Orchestra" (in reality a quartet) only one other time, and that was the evening prior to these recordings at Jazz Standard in New York City. Stripping down the ensemble to barebones with no bassist, Hersch is joined by veteran drummer Richie Barshay, the excellent trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and Australian vocalist Jo Lawry. The music sports ethereal, wistful qualities at times, and in other instances, playful, prosaic, ethnic, and curious ones. Ever mindful of the deeper spirit of the heart, Hersch is consistently able to excavate deep emotions from the wellspring of timeless beauty, ancient traditions, and always the true spirit of modern jazz. "Stuttering" kicks off the set, and it's one of those irresistible pieces that commands your attention from the first note to the last, with its mixed meter navigation based in 3/4 time, unison piano, muted trumpet, and vocal lines, a daunting swing, the complex made simple, and adding a smidgen of funk. Hersch's famous "Song Without Words" is a samba with spiritual implications, Alessi's bright trumpet identifies the bluesy da-da song "Down Home," and an Afro-Cuban bounce tacked onto a New Orleans shuffle with Lawry and Hersch's quick, maximized staccato phrases enhances "Free Flying." Norma Winstone's lyrics are soulfully sung by Lawry in the innocent, breathless, light hearted way they were written on the waltz swing ballad "Invitation to the Dance" and the unrequited, sweet, Valentine's Day invitation "A Wish." Lawry sings and recites M.J. Salter's "what did you think?" poem; "Light Years," uses wordless scat on the fun and impish tune "Lee's Dream," one Bill Evans would enjoy; la-la's along during the more ECM like, Native American elements of "Child's Song," and hums in reserved, reverent repast aside Hersch for the Spanish tinged paean/prayer "Canzona." Each piece uniquely tells its own story, with Alessi's constantly inventive and listenable horn positively influencing the sound of Hersch's wise and wary piano stylings. Another successful project in a long line of them, it is a very fine example of how Hersch continually expands his horizons beyond standard fare and tradition, making his own history with every unique idea he is still capable of fathoming after all these years.



Fred Hersch
Thelonious: Plays Monk



By C. Michael Bailey
Track Listing:

'Round Midnight, In Walked Bud, Crepuscule with Nellie/Reflections, Think of One, Ask Me Now, Evidence, Five Vies of Misterioso, Let´s Cool One, Bemsha Swing, Light Blue/Pannonica, I Mean You, 'Round Midnight Reprise
I had the opportunity to see the Fred Hersch Trio perform at the Wildwood Jazz Festival (Little Rock) in 1996. At the time I was unfamiliar with him and thus had no expectations of his performance. I found him to be a precise performer and exceptional arranger. His trio was razor sharp, sculpting standards and originals with the direction of his innovative arrangements. One of the highlights he and his trio performed was Monk?s "In Walked Bud". A year later I was happy to read in downbeat that Hersch had a Monk project in the works which was released in January.
Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk is one of the most unique treatments of Monks music I have heard. A critical juxtaposition can be made to Marcus Roberts? very traditional treatment of Monk. Where Roberts comes off a fundamentalist, Hersch comes off an impressionist. To mature this metaphor: if Monk?s music is a collection of water lilies, then Hersch plays the part of Monet performing them, painting them.
Hersch as impressionist is best illustrated on "?Round Midnight" which opens with an upper register whisper of the ballad melody. The entire piece is played lightly, almost ethereally, with a minimum of arrangement. It is played as if almost in a daydream. I can imagine "Five Views of Misterioso" being the result of Debussy interpreting Monk?s most famous blues while slumming on the Left Bank. Hersch plays the minimalist on "Misterioso, altering the essence of the song with each consideration. He plays with a light touch that is never aggressive and always sensitive.
A brief digression: Hersch is no blues player. This fact is illustrated in the fact that "Misterioso" aside, Hersch plays none of Monk?s hard blues ("Straight, No Chaser", "Blue Monk"). Also, the blues are conspicuously absent from his most recent recordings, Live at Maybeck, Passion Flower, and Plays Rodgers and Hammerstein. He is, however, a ballad and light standard player nonparallel. Fred Hersch is to ballad playing what Gene Harris is to blues playing.
There are songs on Thelonious that Hersch does play pretty straight. "In Walked Bud" is precise and rollicking, as well as "I Mean You." "Let?s Cool One" is a minimalists dream, evolving from a right hand, single note presentation of the theme through an insinuating left hand who finally meets the right in the sparest of bass lines. "Bemsha Swing" is a Monk walk in Central Park, moderately paced and tasteful.
Tasteful. That is how to describe this entire record. I should like to hear a Hersch recording of Miles Davis? most popular ballads. I hope he records one.


Fred Hersch
In Amsterdam: Live At The Bimhuis




By Brian P. Lonergan
Track Listing: 

A Lark; The Nearness of You; Evidence; At the Close of the Day; O Grande Amor; The Peacocks; Don't Blame Me; Valentine.
This live recording offers an exquisite sixty minutes of solo piano. In a mix of originals and standards, Fred Hersch's relaxed and loose approach (he didn't know he was being recorded) yields tunes that feel comfortably deconstructed—the ballads especially have a spacious air to them—and freshly re-imagined. Hersch's own voice is always paramount. It's as if, to give one example, he weren't playing the Hoagy Carmichael standard "The Nearness of You, but one of his own ballads that happened to borrow a few building blocks from Carmichael's song. The overall impression is less that of a series of jazz tunes with markedly different identities, but a suite of improvised solo piano divided into discreet movements.
In Amsterdam reaches its zenith with the fourth and fifth of the eight tracks, Hersch's original ballad "At the Close of the Day and his vast-roving cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "O Grande Amor. The former, as its title suggests, is a reflective piece, but also exploratory, using successions of rich harmonies and pronounced contrast between the high and low register of the piano. "O Grande Amor is reminiscent of Keith Jarrett's more inspired solo excursions, passing through angst and calm, searching through shadows and sunlight, and finally arriving at a falling Latin vamp to close.
This may be a stumper of a jazz trivia question in the years to come: Who was the first pianist to have a week-long run of solo performances at the Village Vanguard? The honor belongs not to any of jazz's elder statesmen, but Fred Hersch himself, who made this bit of history the first week of March, 2006.
Hersch approached the piano with a long list of possible tunes, from which he selected the set's varied program. It included his "atmospheric medley of Russ Freeman's "The Wind into Alec Wilder's "Moon and Sand, a bouncy jaunt through Billy Strayhorn's "U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group) and Joni Mitchell's "My Old Man, on which he kept the melody intact over dissonant jazz harmonies below and seemed to have the most fun of the set. On "I'll Be Seeing You, Hersch made a case for himself as one of the premier ballad players today, with light, sprinkled right-hand lines, dark pillows of left-hand chords, and dynamics shifting at an impulse.

Discography - Part 2

Fred Hersch
Plays Jobim




By Victor L. Schermer
Track Listing:

Por Toda Minha Vida; O Grande Amor; Luiza; Meditacao; Insensatez; Brigas Nunca Mais; Modinha/Olha Maria; Desafinado; Corcovado. Personnel: Fred Hersch: piano; Jamey Haddad: percussion (6).
It is a pleasure to follow pianist Fred Hersch's recorded output as he delivers creative and deeply felt solo and small group jazz, seeking to express ideas that sometimes approach the mysterious and ineffable, yet remain rooted in the best of musical expression. In this excellent release, Hersch offers nine solo piano versions of the work of the late great and beloved co-inventor and master of Brazilian bossa nova, Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, many of whose songs, initially brought to the jazz scene by guitarist Charlie Byrd and saxophonist Stan Getz and hitting the pinnacle of the pop charts with the vocal renderings of Astrud Gilberto and, later, Frank Sinatra, have become standards and touched the hearts of many.
As Hersch mentions in the brief reflections of his liner notes, he does not try to recapitulate the straight-ahead bossa nova renditions that he learned early in his career and that have characterized the multitude of recordings of Jobim's music. Rather, each is a meditation and sometimes even a deconstruction of what is contained in each song; in this sense, perhaps, reminiscent of the subtle renderings of guitarist Joao Gilberto. In gentle, reflective ballads such as the opening "Por Toda Minha Vida," "Luiza," and finale, "Corcovado," Hersch seeks to sustain a mood, often reminiscent of Bill Evans, and concentrating on the inner voicings of the Debussy-ian harmonies that influenced both the late pianist and Jobim. In a series of introspective variations, he goes into the corner pockets of the song, looking for an image here, a sense-memory there, a moment of truth everywhere. At times, like Evans, he achieves a loveliness that reaches down into the heart.
What Hersch does with the upbeat bossa novas like "O Grande Amor," Brigas Nunca Mais" (accompanied by percussionist Jamey Haddad), and "Desafinado" comes as a bit of a surprise, as he rocks and rags the bossa rhythm into something vaguely reminiscent of a cross between tango and hip hop, and which he explains in his commentary is based on Brazilian ragtime, "chorinhos." Once accustomed to it, the strong rhythm adds energy to the tunes that even Jobim might not have contemplated. Ultimately it is pure Hersch-play, specifically his unique way of finding something different, even a bit exotic, and going with it, although Jobim himself anticipated some of this fun in his wonderfully playful and intimate recording with Brazilian singer, Elis Regina.
All of the music here is infused with Hersch's ability to use his vast assimilation of classical and jazz genres to tell a story and improvise rich tapestries of harmony, counterpoint, and tone color that enter into a reflective reverie between himself and Jobim. He never retreats from complexity, and at times achieves a compositional richness which suggests that what he plays spontaneously could well be transcribed into an orchestral suite. This is not the casual Jobim that gets piped into restaurants and hotel bars. This is one master musician's homage to another, done with respect. One can be sure that Jobim himself—who, more than a song writer, incorporated his awareness of multiple musical modes, from Brazilian samba, to Debussy and Villa-Lobos, to West Coast "cool" jazz into his songs—would have felt honored and touched by Hersch's interpretations.


The Fred Hersch Trio
Dancing In The Dark




by Brian Bartolini
Fred Hersch and his bandmates interpret 11 standards on their fine album, Dancing in the Dark. Hersch is a lyrical player who possesses a light touch and a sophisticated sense of style. His playing is unmistakably influenced by Bill Evans, and his trio work is marked by some of the characteristics that made Evans' best trios so memorable: cohesive, "whole is greater than the sum of its parts," musical communication. Drew Gress (bass) and Tom Rainey (drums) are outstanding throughout these 70 minutes and their efforts become even more apparent with repeated listenings. The best tracks on Dancing in the Dark happen to also be the least well known; the brisk "So in Love," the delicate, solo vehicle "If I Should Lose You," the soft, orchestral "Wild Is the Wind," and the bright, swinging title piece. Though he occasionally takes a dissonant, avant-garde approach ("Out of Nowhere"), it is clearly not his most effective style. Hersch is at is best when he "sings" on the piano and his ballad playing is consistently first rate. This is a quality album, branded by excellent trio playing and tasteful interpretations of the standard repertoire.


Fred Hersch & Bill Frisell
Songs We Know




By Douglas Payne
Pairing two such superior soloists as guitarist Bill Frisell and pianist Fred Hersch seems a most unlikely match. Despite having gigged together a couple times in the 1980s, the only thing the two seem to have in common is they both record for Nonesuch Records. As it turns out, it was Fred Hersch's idea to finally get the two together in the studio - and it couldn't have been a more inspired combination.
The brilliant, eclectic Frisell is perhaps the most original guitarist of the last two or three decades and he's hardly ever combined his unique sound arsenal with a pianist.
Hersch, on the other hand, has carved out a substantial body of work illustrating his sensitivity as a soloist and finesse as a superior accompanist (particularly for singers), yet he's almost never heard with a guitarist.
The result is the marvelous new Songs We Know, a fine song cycle of contemporary jazz standards, played with a laid-back ease that only two such sharp and original stylists can bring to such well-known music.
Frisell and Hersch concur that the session could have gone many different ways, but it was their mutual love for the standards, with their open palette of simplicity, history and potential for new interpretation that lead to the inspired sounds heard on Songs We Know.
Both leaders have logged many miles playing these and other standards too: Frisell, as part of Paul Motian's trio with tenor giant Joe Lovano, and Hersch, through his recent Plays Monk and Plays Rogers & Hammerstein discs and, even more substantially, on his jazz-the-classics Angel recordings.
But, together, Frisell and Hersch - like Bill Evans and Jim Hall did together before them — bring to bear a fresh chemistry that is too rarely applied to such oft-played material. Hersch remains a melodic, sensitive - even erudite - explorer. And Frisell maintains his sense of humor and displays his ever-inspired internal logic. Together, they explore and experiment with the contours of each other's sound and style and arrive some place that neither might have approached on their own before.
The eleven Songs We Know have many highlights. Chief among the pleasures to be heard here include the playful and unusually funky "There Is No Greater Love," where Frisell's textbook witticisms engage with Hersch's perky, almost abstract commentary. Likewise, Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave" is creative music at its most expressive: where Hersch's piano provides the soft undercurrent while Frisell's sprite, melodic tones carry the tide in, conveying the hypnotic beauty of the sea that Jobim intended.
The two engage most spectacularly, and so nearly at odds, on "What is This Thing Called Love," where the metallic Frisell frolics in the warm cushions Hersch's block chords provide. Then, the pair commiserates romantically (a Hersch specialty) on the lullaby-like (a Frisell specialty) "Someday My Prince Will Come."
For real fireworks, listen to how quickly the two depart from the corniness of "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" to explore a Monk-like tango of arched, deconstructed sonorities. Then, hear how their dissimilarities are unified on the dance-like "My Little Suede Shoes," where Frisell lays down a jig style head while Hersch's interacts brilliantly with lovely tango cadences.
Songs We Know is a success - and, more notably, a singularly pleasurable listening experience — because it's about more than songs. It's about sounds. Separately, these two stylists have crafted much music that is about the creation and interaction of sounds. Together, they have achieved something special, or what Boston Globe jazz critic Bob Blumenthal calls in his excellent liner notes, "an example of how texture works to shape a performance as directly as melodic or rhythmic invention."
Recorded in San Francisco last year, Songs We Know pins down the provocative sensitivity both Fred Hersch and Bill Frisell bring to creative music. But more importantly, it captures the wondrous result of two great minds spontaneously being expressed as one strong voice. It is a collection that calls out for more, hopefully an added set of the pair's originals. Until then, Songs We Know are songs creative music listeners will want to hear.
Songs:

It Might As Well Be Spring; There Is No Greater Love; Someday My Prince Will Come; Softly As In A Morning Sunrise; Blue Monk; My One And Only Love; My Little Suede Shoes; Yesterdays; I Got Rhythm; Wave; What Is This Thing Called Love.
Players:

Fred Hersch: Steinway piano; Bill Frisell: acoustic and Klien electric guitar.


Fred Hersch Trio
Horizons

by Scott Yanow
Fred Hersch's debut as a leader was this trio set with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron. Hersch, who mixes together elements of Bill Evans and Tommy Flanagan with his own approach to chordal improvisation, already sounds fairly individual on such numbers as "My Heart Stood Still," Herbie Hancock's "One Finger Snap," and "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top." The superior compositions and Hersch's own logical but fresh style made this an impressive beginning to his productive solo career.



The Fred Hersch Trio
Night and The Music




By Victor L. Schermer
Track Listing:

So in Love; Rhythm Spirit; Heartland; Galaxy Fragment/You and the Night and the Music; Boo Boos Birthday; Change Partners; How Deep is the Ocean; Gravitys Pull; Andrew John; Misterioso.
Personnel:

Fred Hersch: piano; Drew Gress: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums.
Pianist Fred Hersch is proving himself to be not only a solid mainstream jazz pianist but also an imaginative and creative musical force. His Leaves of Grass (Palmetto, 2005), with vocalist Kurt Elling broke new ground by setting the poetry of Walt Whitman to written and improvised musical composition incorporating jazz and traditional "heartland American motifs. Fred Hersch Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto, 2006) offered a panoply of solo piano music at a high level of sophistication and technique.
On Night and the Music, Hersch joins forces with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, using the richly interactive and expressive piano trio format (as powerfully developed by Bill Evans and taken further by Keith Jarrett) to form a latticework of images and musical ideas that is both highly listenable and relentlessly probing. The tracks include several originals, some American Songbook standards, and two Thelonious Monk compositions. The three musicians function as a tight, integrated unit sustaining stylistic integrity and steadiness of purpose such that the total impression is that of a unified exploration of the possibilities inherent in a series of tri-alogues about a few key ideas initiated by Hersch at the keyboard.
The thematics of the album are more implied than stated, encouraging and allowing the listener to bring in his or her own understanding. The overriding motif is the dialogue between personal human experience and the cosmos, a dualistic mythos of Enlightenment philosophy that was a recurrent preoccupation of none other than Beethoven. Thus, for example, an original called "Galaxies is combined with the standard "You and the Night and the Music. Monk's "Boo Boo's Birthday is a personal testament, while his "Misterioso haunts us with a reach towards something beyond the human, something cosmic. "Change Partners contrasts with "Gravity's Pull.
And so on, in an alternating exploration of possibilities inherent in the "starry nights of both Van Gogh and the astronomers. There are also some echoes of the late Beethoven in the complex counterpoint that emerges among Hersch, Gress, and Waits as they brood together on the vicissitudes of Fate and what it all might mean.
This CD is conservative in its layout of what could be a coherent nightclub set rather than a juxtaposition of discordant variation that is characteristic of some of Hersch's other recordings. A comparison with the groundbreaking Bill Evans trio's At the Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961) is inevitable. Both are non-stop introspective explorations (coincidentally the title of one of Evans' best albums). However, Evans was undeniably a romantic, while Hersch is anything but sentimental.
On this CD, the music is presented as a series of puzzles and conundrums examined with Zen-like detachment or perhaps, in another regard, the mathematical precision of J.S. Bach. One is indeed moved, but not so much by the depth of feeling as by the imposing architecture of the musical development itself.

Discography - Part 1

Fred Hersch
Songs Without Words



by Ken Dryden
Fred Hersch's sixth release for Nonesuch is a three-CD set, with separate volumes focusing on original works, classic jazz, and, finally, songs by Cole Porter. His suite of six "Songs Without Words" can't help but highlight his background in classical music, but his lyrical pieces still have the "sound of surprise" that differentiates jazz from all other forms of music. Percussionist Jamey Haddad joins the pianist for a remake of "Child's Song," the most free form performance on the first disc. "Up in the Air," a duet with flügelhornist Ralph Alessi, is a hypnotic waltz that proves to be immediately captivating. Hersch revisits two of his early compositions, and "Heartsong," a happy piece that bursts with energy and remains one of his most enduring works; there's also a new version of his moody ballad "Sarabande." Disc two has some interesting twists. Thelonious Monk's "Work" isn't all that well-known, and the pianist responds to its quirky theme with an imaginative improvisation. Russ Freeman's "The Wind" receives an initially melodic treatment then detours into a free form setting that remains accessible. Kenny Wheeler's "Winter Sweet" is very familiar ground for Hersch, who has performed it often with its composer. Also present are equally creative interpretations of music by Duke Ellington, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie. Hersch's greatest challenge may have been the often-recorded Cole Porter's music. Yet he doesn't hesitate to find a new path through "Get out of Town," giving it a darker texture. The wave-like bassline added to "From This Moment On" gives it a new flavor, while his caressing of "I Concentrate on You" adds to the beauty of this already memorable ballad. Bob Blumenthal's enlightening liner notes add to the value of this highly recommended set.

By svf 

The latest release from pianist Fred Hersch is a sprawling boxed set of 3 CDs loosely united by the concept of "songs without words". While this might be perceived as overly bold, excessive, or self-indulgent, instead Hersch's ambitious project is a shining artistic success and one of the finest jazz releases of the year to date.
The first disc, "Songs Without Words," consists entirely of Hersch's original compositions, the second, "Jazz Tunes," is a collection of songs by Monk, Mingus, Shorter, Ellington and others, and the third CD, "Music of Cole Porter," is, well, a selection of Cole Porter songs. While most performances are solo piano, Fred is joined by other players (including Ralph Alessi on trumpet and flugelhorn and Rich Perry on tenor sax) for some duet, trio, and quintet arrangements.
I was fortunate enough to see a live solo performance by Mr. Hersch just a few days ago where he played some selections from this release before an amazingly small audience of 50 or so people. (Being at Shank Hall in Milwaukee, he commented what an honor it was to share the stage with the famed Stonehenge model from "Spinal Tap.") Needless to say, these CDs capture the wonderful essence of this concert and more. This is the kind of set you really treasure, knowing it will provide endless hours of listening and discovery. Those who enjoyed his "Live at Jordan Hall" release will surely love this collection which has a similar relaxed and intimate recital-like atmosphere. The disc of originals is probably the most interesting and unexpected treat here... "Songs without Words" is a 6-part suite of pieces combining abstraction and lyricism in various short character forms. "Child's Song" is a particularly evocative extended duet with Jamey Haddad on percussion.
The predominant mood over all three discs is reflective, introspective, and a bit cerebral, but interspersed are a fair share of whimsical and rollicking pieces, such as "Caravan" and "Let's Do It". Yet my personal favorites are the lovely ballads, both the originals and the interpretations, which may bring to mind the pianism of Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau. Particularly stunning is the lightness of touch and richness in tone and voicings that Hersch displays here. Performances of "The Wind," "Mood Indigo," and "So In Love" will leave you breathless.
At the concert I attended, Fred revealed that this was originally conceived as a 4-disc release: the fourth CD would have been all songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim... imagine that!


The Fred Hersch Trio
Plays



by Brian Bartolini
On this highly recommended set, Fred Hersch plays his favorite compositions from ten of the greatest composers in the history of recorded jazz -- Monk, Miles, Ellington, and Strayhorn included. All of the important and complimentary adjectives customarily used in relation to Hersch's work can also be used to describe this effort, most notably lyricism, warmth, and taste. Hersch and his bandmates -- Drew Gress (bass) and Tom Rainey (drums) -- form a trio in the best sense of the word. The band listens to and respects one another, providing appropriate space for each to explore, while always functioning as a complete and thoughtful whole. They never overplay; they are consistently interesting; they choose only the best music to play. If Hersch's distinctive style can be compared to other artists, the list would certainly include Bill Evans, in terms of lyricism and touch, and Thelonious Monk, for his employment of unique rhythmic and harmonic patterns. Each of the tracks on this album is worthwhile, yet two stand out above the rest: Monk's "Played Twice" and "Think of One." Hersch has always been a supreme interpreter of Monk's compositions, and again he does not disappoint. "Played Twice" is stripped down to its essential, stark beauty, while "Think of One" is played with a slightly heavier touch and offers the quirky rhythms, variable tempos, and subtle humor that are indispensable to Monk. If you are a fan of jazz piano trio, do not miss this opportunity to enjoy one of the best.


Fred Hersch
Let Yourself Go - Live At Jordan Hall


by Rick Anderson
Fred Hersch is a well-respected session pianist and bandleader who has taught at the New School and is currently on the faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston. This disc documents a faculty recital he played in October of 1998, a concert that was never intended to be released commercially. But Hersch, who hadn't played a full concert in public for over six months before his recital at Jordan Hall, was so pleased with this performance that he agreed to allow Nonesuch to issue it on CD. He was right. The program opens with a gently stunning rendition of the folk song "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair," which then segues into the love theme from Spartacus, a tune generally associated with the late Bill Evans, and one which Hersch plays with an impressionistic delicacy that harks back explicitly to Evans. There are other standards, including the Gershwin classic "I Loves You Porgy" and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You," as well as a rather meditative rendition of Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk," on which Hersch uses open chords in manner that evokes the Balkan modalisms of Bartok. One of the more touching performances here is his piano arrangement of the Joni Mitchell song "My Old Man." Everything is played with virtuosic flair, but Hersch never shows off his technique or lapses into noodling self-indulgence. The result is a solo album of rare insight and musicality. Highly recommended.



Fred Hersch Trio
+ 2



by Ken Dryden
After primarily concentrating on solo and trio recordings for an extended time, pianist Fred Hersch opted to expand his group to a quintet for this outstanding session. With Nasheet Waits on drums and longtime bassist Drew Gress, Hersch's choice of trumpeter and flügelhornist Ralph Alessi and tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby proves to be an inspired one. Other than a gorgeous interpretation of the Beatles' timeless ballad "And I Love Her," whose arrangement has the flavor of an impressionist like Satie, the songs are all originals by the leader. Hersch's "A Riddle Song," which is made up of intervals of perfect fifths, is an infectious post-bop vehicle created to feature the phenomenal Waits, though the pianist has his say with some wailing choruses of his own. "Miss B" is a funky off-kilter tune with a call-and-response between Alessi and Malaby. "Black Dog Pays a Visit" (whose title was inspired by Winston Churchill's term for depression) is a complex moody work that packs an emotional punch. The intricate "Marshall's Plan" hints at the influence of Bill Evans. "Lee's Dream," which honors Lee Konitz and owes its creation to the chord changes of "You Stepped Out of a Dream," is a fascinating duet by Hersch and Malaby. This is yet another highly recommended addition to Fred Hersch's vast discography as a leader.


Fred Hersch Trio
Whirl




By Dan Bilawsky
Many of the greatest jazz musicians have refused to let physical setbacks derail their artistic journey. When Les Paul discovered his broken arm would be permanently set in one position, he made sure it was at a proper angle for guitar playing. Guitarist Pat Martino suffered a brain aneurysm and had to relearn to play the guitar—and rediscover his very being. Pianist Fred Hersch can now be added to this list.
In late 2008, Hersch fell into a coma that lasted two months, could not swallow—or eat or drink—for eight months and suffered a variety of other AIDS-related ailments (i.e. renal failure) as his body was, essentially, shutting down. Medical care, sheer determination and the miraculous spirit of the human body eventually helped Hersch battle back but, as David Hadju noted in an article for the New York Times Magazine, "he lost nearly all motor function in his hands and could not hold a pencil, let alone play the piano." While it would be easy for many people, given the same circumstances, to give up, Fred Hersch is not most people. One of the most artistically driven forces in jazz and one of the most influential pianists of his generation, Hersch buckled down, focused intensely on rehabilitation and brought himself back into the fold.
Whirl is the first recording Hersch has made after his recovery and, while still retaining the key components of his sound and style, a looser and more organic feel seems to surround some of this music. The effortless, relaxed swing of "You're My Everything" begins the album. Drummer Eric McPherson's light touch and constant movement help to gently move this piece along while bassist John Hebert's playing is highly complementary to Hersch's ideas. McPherson is the rare musician who often paints non-stop ideas, yet manages to blend into the bigger picture and add all the right touches. Hersch's "Snow Is Falling..." is a wonderful example of his Midas touch on the piano. Few whose fingers grace the 88s can even come close to getting the sound that Hersch charms out of a piano. The airy ambience endemic to Paul Motian's work is apparent in Hersch's moody and intriguing take on the drummer's "Blue Midnight." Hebert and McPherson help a great deal in painting this beautifully hazy picture.
"Skipping" is one of the hippest pieces on this album and the title—perhaps referencing the mixed meters or simply the act of skipping—perfectly reflects the fun and jaunty feel. "Mandevilla," self described by Hersch as a habanera that's "named after a Brazilian jasmine vine," gives Hebert a chance to step out front for a bit and the bassist perfectly supports Hersch during his brilliant and enthusiastic soloing. McPherson moves to brushes for the trio's musings on "When Your Lover Has Gone," an evocative display of sensitivity mixed with creativity. While Hersch has never had, and is unlikely to develop, a heavy handed approach to playing, his sound is definitely bolder and more agressive as his trio swirls and storms through the musical whirlwinds of "Whirl." The calm after the storm arrives with "Sad Poet," a Hersch original dedicated to Antonio Carlos Jobim. While McPherson solos over the vamp at the end of the song, the better part of the piece swims through calm waters and—while avoiding any direct reference to Jobim's canon—serves as a fine tribute to this musical pioneer.
Pianist Jaki Byard was one of Hersch's teachers and he pays tribute to this underappreciated educator, composer and performer by interpreting Byard's Thelonious Monk-ish tribute to saxophonist Charlie Parker's mother, "Mrs. Parker of K.C." Hersch's takes on this type of tune are always a study in contrasts, with his clean and precise touch seemingly at odds with the earthy vibe of the music; but these opposing ideals are part of what makes this performance—and many like it—so compelling. The album ends with "Still Here," a reflective musical jewel that pays tribute to saxophonist Wayne Shorter and his continuing ability to create and inspire. In closing the album with such a title, Hersch might have been subconsciously referencing his own brush with death. Thankfully, he too is still here to continue to create and inspire.
Tracks:
You're My Everything; Snow Is Falling...;Blue Midnight; Skipping; Mandevilla; When Your Lover Has Gone; Whirl; Sad Poet; Mrs. Parker Of K.C.; Still Here.
Personnel:
Fred Hersch: piano; John Hebert: bass; Eric McPherson: drums.

Giant Steps: The Survival Of A Great Jazz Pianist

By DAVID HAJDU
Published: January 28, 2010 - The New York Times

Influential artists sometimes click in the public consciousness only after the rise of the movements they have influenced. A school of creative work emerges — seemingly spontaneously, its origins obscure at first. Then, with attention to the artists in that school comes recognition of their influences, their antecedents and their mentors. After Pollock, de Kooning and their peers in postwar American art established Abstract Expressionism, the precursory importance of prewar iconoclasts like Kandinsky became clear. After the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash blurted forth punk rock in the 1970s, a rude vision became apparent in the noise of ’60s garage bands like the Seeds.
A new movement in jazz has surfaced over the past few years — a wave of highly expressive music more concerned with emotion than with craft or virtuosity; a genre-blind music that casually mingles strains of pop, classical and folk musics from many cultures; an informal, elastic music unyielding to rigid conceptions of what jazz is supposed to be. It’s fair to call it “post-Marsalis,” in that it leaves behind the defensive, canon-oriented musical conservatism of ’90s jazz (as both Branford and Wynton Marsalis themselves have done in their best work of the past decade). Among this music’s most celebrated and duly admired practitioners are the pianists Brad Mehldau, Ethan Iverson (of the trio the Bad Plus), Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer. And singular among the trailblazers of their art, a largely unsung innovator of this borderless, individualistic jazz — a jazz for the 21st century — is the pianist and composer Fred Hersch.
Never a grandstander, unconcerned with publicity, Hersch has been a fiercely independent but unassuming presence on the New York jazz scene since he moved to the city at age 21 in 1977. He has made more than 45 albums as a solo performer, composer, bandleader or duo partner since 1991, when he released his first record of original material, a collection of unclassifiable songs composed for jazz rhythm section, tenor saxophone and cello, aptly titled, “Forward Motion.” His body of work is clearly recognizable as a manifesto of contemporary jazz. “Some people think I sound like Fred,” says Mehldau, who like Iverson is a former student of Hersch’s. “That’s because Fred was a major influence on me and on a lot of the players around today. Fred’s musical world is a world where a lot of the developments of jazz history and all of music history come together in a very contemporary way. His style has a lot to do with thinking as an individual, and it has a lot to do with beauty. I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I hadn’t learned from Fred, and I think that’s true of quite a few other people.”
Jazz — a music energized by the tensions between tradition and innovation, between collaborative cooperation and individual expression — has gone through multiple phases over the years since Hersch started playing professionally more than 30 years ago: a craze for jazz-rock fusion; a celebrated rediscovery of the work of iconic masters (chief among them, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, exemplars of swing, orchestral jazz and bop, respectively); a retro lindy-hop fad; an arty “downtown” kick; and a leaning toward world music. Hersch has concerned himself with none of them. Hardly a straight-ahead bopper or a swing revivalist, a player too romantic for the avant-garde and far too serious for the lounges, Hersch is an artist indifferent to genre and unbeholden to musical fashion. The jazz tradition he best connects to is the unshakable iconoclasm of Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and others like-minded in their disregard for like-mindedness. Hersch’s music — luxurious, free-flowing, unashamedly gorgeous jazz — is idiosyncratically, unmistakably a creation of his own. As Ben Ratliff described him in a New York Times review of a Village Vanguard performance in 1997, Hersch is “a master who plays it his way.”
His determination to do things the Fred Hersch way has intensified considerably since the early ’90s, when he made public his diagnosis of AIDS. Indeed, Hersch’s range and prolificacy are such that he has needed half a dozen record labels for as many purposes: Nonesuch for Hersch the solo pianist; Sunnyside for his unorthodox quartet, the Pocket Orchestra; Palmetto for his quintet, the Fred Hersch Trio +2; Naxos for his hybrid jazz-classical concert music; various labels for his duet projects with singers as varied as Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer, the veteran Brazilian vocalist Leny Andrade and the classical soprano Renée Fleming; and Concord for his concert at the Maybeck Recital Hall.
“Fred is one of those rare musicians who can do many things well and never tries to sound like anyone else,” says Seth Abramson, who books the Jazz Standard. “It’s interesting how many other pianists who come into the club remind me of Fred.” That is to say, jazz has come around to doing it Hersch’s way.
While the sensibility he pioneered has flourished, Hersch himself has been heard from only sporadically over the past two years. The reason is that he has, on and off during this period, been gravely ill, so sick from AIDS and a severe bout of pneumonia that the people closest to him — his partner, Scott Morgan, and his brother, Hank, as well as his parents — thought, on the worst of his many very bad days, that they had seen him for the last time. Early in 2008, the H.I.V. virus migrated to his brain, and Hersch developed AIDS-related dementia. He lived for a time in mental and physical seclusion, hallucinating under the delusion that he had the power to control time and space and that everyone around him was plotting his demise. In fact, he came so close to dying that his paranoia seemed practically justified. At his sickest, late that year, Hersch fell into a coma and remained unconscious for a full two months. While incapacitated, he was bound to his bed in St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. He lost renal function and had to undergo regular dialysis, and he required a tracheotomy. He was unable to consume food or liquids of any kind, including water, for eight months. He could not swallow a thing or speak above a faint whisper. As a result of his prolonged unconsciousness and inactivity, he lost nearly all motor function in his hands and could not hold a pencil, let alone play the piano.
Today, at age 54, after many months of rehabilitation and therapy, grueling effort, effective medical care, an almost irrationally defiant refusal to accept his problems as anything less than temporary distractions from his music and a considerable amount of good luck, Hersch has achieved full recovery. Last year, he released two albums: a concert performance of his Pocket Orchestra CD, issued in the spring, and a solo piano record, “Fred Hersch Plays Jobim,” released (to immediate acclaim) in the summer. He has three completed works as yet unrecorded: a song cycle about art and photographic images, which he wrote with the poet Mary Jo Salter (some pieces of which were performed in a tribute to Hersch’s music at Jazz at Lincoln Center a few years ago); a collection of jazz tunes honoring a quirky range of artists (musicians, writers, dancers) whom he admires; and a suite derived from themes by Tchaikovsky. On top of this explosion of Hersch music, a documentary about him — “Let Yourself Go: The Lives of Fred Hersch,” directed by the German filmmaker Katja Duregger — also came out last year.
In the fall, Hersch began work on a major new project, a long-form work that will deal explicitly with his recent traumas in words and music. The piece is an attempt to make art from the only life he knew for months, to give musical form to the dream images and cryptic narratives he still recalls vividly from his days and nights in a coma.
“I’VE BEEN THROUGH a lot, and I want to make something of it, musically,” Hersch said one afternoon in October. He had just finished giving a private lesson to a young pianist named Jeremy Siskind in the SoHo loft that has served as his professional headquarters and his New York residence for 30 years. For a while in the ’80s, Hersch used the loft as a recording studio. In the corner of his parlor, a tiny, half-octagon-shaped room-within-a-room betrays its past as a drum chamber. He has brightened the almost lightless space by choosing splashy, Southwestern-ish pastel fabrics for the furnishings, and by placing, here and there, whimsical decorations like the toy piano on the top of the bookcase. Seated on the stool of the toy, prepared to play a four-handed duet, are painted carved-wood sculptures of a cat and a parrot. Facing the sofa is a 1921 Steinway grand piano at which Hersch, a jazz cat who has lived several lives, just gave a lesson to one of his many emulators. The piano — the real one — once belonged to Hersch’s paternal grandmother.
“I never wanted to be a classical pianist, because that takes a lot of discipline, and it takes chops, and I don’t particularly like to practice, and I don’t care very much about chops,” Hersch said. “To me, chops are just the ability to spin off and rattle off stuff. When you listen to somebody with a lot of chops, you say, ‘Wow!’ But you don’t really come away feeling very much.”
Hersch looked cheery in a pale-lemon, open-neck, wide-collar sport shirt from the ’50s. He has a thing for vintage clothes, which provide him with a way to dress with flair, economically but without slavishness to the fashions of the season; as such, they connect loosely to his music, down to his work’s winking humor and element of homage to musicians he admires.
Growing up as a child music star in Cincinnati, Hersch was composing little pieces by age 7, and by the time he was 10, he was appearing weekly on a local Sunday-morning kids’ program, “The Skipper Ryle Show.” “The fact that he was on TV and had this prodigious talent gave him a lot of confidence,” recalls his only sibling, Hank, an editor at Sports Illustrated who is about two years younger than his brother. “In fact, he was always a bit of a prima donna.” Also at age 10, Hersch composed a musical play about Peter Pan for his elementary school and rejected the faculty’s demand that he cut or amend the music.
Around the same time, he entered a musical competition and showed up with only a short sketch; he announced that he would play an original composition titled “A Windy Night,” improvised most of it and won first prize. “Fred,” says his father, Henry Hersch, an attorney, “was and is, um . . .” — pause — “a somewhat, I don’t know . . .” — longer pause — “I don’t want to use too loaded a word, but I’d say ‘high-strung’ or ‘mercurial’ or whatever. He has what some people call an artistic temperament.”
After a term in general studies at Grinnell College in Iowa, Hersch dropped out and moved back to Cincinnati for a year and a half. He concentrated on his jazz education, gigging around town with local players, learning the music and its culture. Invigorated, he went back to college for music, enrolling in the New England Conservatory, where he studied under the jazz pianist and composer Jaki Byard. Graduating with honors, he moved to New York for the postgraduate education of sideman life.
Few jazz musicians in Hersch’s generation rose as fast as he did. “Fred was way out in front,” says the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, a fellow Ohio native three years older than Hersch. “A lot of the giants were still on the scene, and it was the great dream of the young cats like us to play with them, and Fred was one of the first ones to make that big jump.”
When I first heard of Hersch, in the mid-’80s, he seemed to be in all the best places a jazz pianist could be — playing one night with Joe Henderson, another night with Stan Getz or Lee Konitz or on his own at Bradley’s, the club on University Place where many of the most respected pianists in jazz played and congregated to hear, support and pilfer from one another. Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan and Jimmy Rowles all used Bradley’s as their base, and each of them was at least 25 years older than Hersch. “Fred is unique among pianists his age as a musician who really paid his dues as a jazz player,” Ethan Iverson says. “I can’t even imagine what it was like to play night after night with Joe Henderson or Art Farmer and to play at Bradley’s in front of the most horrifyingly heavy judges, juries and executioners. The way that pianists of my generation have learned about the music is through the sort of artificial world of records and scores, and not really natural assimilation. Fred absorbed the whole jazz tradition in the deepest possible way, and that’s only the foundation of his playing. It was just his starting point. For a lot of other pianists, that would be the end point.”
What I recall most vividly about Hersch’s playing from his early years is its striking technical facility; I found him impressive — though not as moving as I would find him years later. Over time, the physics of Hersch’s musicianship inverted; he gave up impressing and worked, increasingly, to move. “Jazz musicians didn’t have stylists and publicists,” Hersch said, sitting straight-backed on the sofa in his loft. “You could hang out at the bar, and there was Art Blakey, smashed and hitting on the woman next to him. I wanted to play with the greatest players in the world, and I was probably pushy, but that’s how I achieved what I did.”
While he worked closely with other musicians, as jazz demands, he labored to protect the secret of his homosexuality. “I was leading a dual life — being gay and being a jazz musician and not knowing how those were going to meet,” Hersch said. “Jazz music, by its very nature, is intimate. You’re trusting other people — there’s an intensity and shared emotion of creating something together, and I felt that if people knew that I was gay, they would mistake my intensity for sexual attraction. I didn’t want it to stand in the way of achieving what I wanted to achieve. If you were sincere and you had talent and you’re the kind of guy people want to play with, they didn’t care what color you are — you could be purple — but gayness was a different matter.”
Around the time Hersch recorded his first album as a trio leader, “Horizons,” for Concord, in the mid-’80s, he found out he was H.I.V.-positive. “So my whole career as a leader has had this cloud over it,” Hersch said. “I was in that who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen? land. A lot of my friends” — many of whom had full-blown AIDS — “were hopping off.”
One afternoon, Hersch had a rehearsal scheduled with Stan Getz in Hersch’s loft. After Getz rang Hersch’s buzzer, Hersch found himself scooting to his bathroom to hide his boyfriend’s toothbrush. “That’s when I realized, What the hell am I doing?” he recalled. “This is my home. This is my life. I decided I was going to open up about everything and just be myself, and the period of coming out was the beginning of my gaining confidence as a composer. I felt like I had to get it out there while I still had time.”
Hersch paused abruptly, and said, “Hold on — I need to keep hydrated.” He took a long gulp of iced tea and swallowed, with a bit of difficulty. “I thought every album I did was going to be my last album,” he went on. “Being sick and knowing my time is precious has made me want to be totally myself in my music. I decided that I wasn’t interested in playing hip music for hip cats. So I don’t pander to an audience. I’m completely comfortable with what I do, and I just don’t care what other people are doing.” He coughed a bit of iced tea into a paper napkin.
“It’s kind of a miracle that I’m here at all,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s interesting — I had to learn to work with a more limited palette, technically, as a pianist. At the same time, I felt stronger than ever, creatively. I found that I had more interesting things to say musically. I had more to express, and what I had to say didn’t require pyrotechnics. The way I deal with the disease is, even though it has the power, I am not going to acknowledge that it has the power to mess with me.”
In October, Hersch started working intently on what he sees as his “most personal and probably most ambitious” effort: “the coma project.” As he conceives of it at this early stage, it will be a concert-length piece with words, music and perhaps multimedia elements, to be performed by a midsize ensemble of a configuration to be determined as the music takes shape. Hersch is developing the new work with Herschel Garfein, the librettist and sometime composer best known for his collaboration with the composer Robert Aldridge on the opera “Elmer Gantry.” “I was still alive for all that time I was unconscious, but the only life I had was in my dreams and nightmares, and they were incredibly strange and sometimes horrifying and sometimes beautiful,” Hersch said. “I was in a lot of physical pain and discomfort. I found out later that I had been restrained — I was strapped to the bed, and the dreams I had were unbelievably weird and mysterious. I’ve been trying to come to terms with what I went through, and the best way I know is to try to express it in music.”
What form will that music take? “It was an incredibly bizarre and sometimes terrifying experience,” Hersch said. “There are no words to describe it. I’m hoping music can.”
To many jazz fans, Fred Hersch is perhaps best known as a gay jazzman — or the gay jazzman, despite the fact that the jazz world, like every sphere of human endeavor in and out of the arts, has always had a homosexual population. Indeed, Hersch’s identity as a gay man — and one with AIDS — has shaped the way his music has been perceived by many people, including his own partner, Scott Morgan. On a cool Saturday morning last summer, Morgan relaxed on the deck of the nice vinyl-sided house he and Hersch have built on the side of a hill in the Pennsylvania woods, and he reflected on Hersch’s image as a gay artist. “One of the reasons that I was attracted to his music was not just his music but the fact that he was an out, gay musician early on — I had him on a pedestal as a musician and as a person,” said Morgan, who has studied both piano and voice and can play standards in the manner of a good rehearsal pianist.
“It impressed me that he was willing to go against the grain from a career perspective,” Morgan went on. “He’s got this incredible core of what he wants and who he is that is kind of amazing to me. I think Fred’s music has an expressiveness and a lyricism that is his own. People say that’s because he’s gay, and I see how people can read into that and say, ‘Well, I hear this sense of emotion, this depth, this lyricism’ — you hear some of that in some of his compositions. Clearly, we are gay, but our lives are not defined by the ‘gay community’ or by being gay.”
If anything has inhibited the ability of Hersch’s music to achieve the broader acceptance that, say, the work of the Marsalis brothers has achieved, it may be the subtlety and sheer loveliness of it — its warmth, its quality of melancholy, traits that Americans conditioned to equate “edginess” and “darkness” with gravity can be slow to take as seriously as music that hits the ears more assaultively. His openness as a gay man is no help here and has surely conspired to feed hoary stereotypes of Hersch and his music as light stuff. As the pianist Jason Moran points out: “Because Fred’s playing is so beautiful, some people don’t take it as seriously as they should. I think some people hear only flowers, but there’s deep soil there. They don’t really understand everything that’s going on. Maybe if he gyrated and groaned and squinted his eyes and made it look hard when he played, they would get it. But Fred doesn’t go for theatrics. Fred at the piano is like LeBron James on the basketball court. He’s perfection.”
Hersch, among the most sensitive of jazz pianists, is acutely sensitive to the proposition that his sensitivity makes his music “gay.” I took up the subject on a walk with him along the gravel path behind his country house. We heard hummingbirds in the beech trees and got to talking about nature and the conception of beauty as a value in gay culture. “I wouldn’t quite say that’s bull, but it’s a very dangerous idea,” Hersch said, slowing his gait. “The compliment I get the most often is, ‘My, you sounded really beautiful.’ I used to think, I want them to say something else, because I felt like that was a kind of, Oh, yeah, you’re gay — so of course you play lyrically and you’re one of the great ballad players. Of course. But now I just don’t care at all what people think. I think music should be beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with beauty. I’m attracted to beauty and lyricism, but I don’t play the way I do because I’m gay. I play the way I do because I’m Fred.”
If his music is sometimes mistaken for soft, its composer never is. Among musicians and other professionals in jazz circles, Hersch’s clarity of purpose and fierceness of will have contributed to his reputation as a fearsome taskmaster. Jo Lawry, the Pocket Orchestra vocalist, remembers as the “foundation stone” of her relationship with Hersch his phone call to her the day after he first saw her sing. Hersch told her that the way she swayed to the beat onstage was a distraction from the music and that she was “jumping all over the place” in her improvisations rather than fully developing her musical ideas.
At a Pocket Orchestra rehearsal in his loft, which I attended early last summer, Hersch ran the group through a piece called “Free Flying” at a vertiginous clip. The piece called for Lawry to precision-scat a wildly complicated melody in unison with the piano, and she flew through it. “Now let’s do it at a preposterous speed,” Hersch announced; the group did, and Lawry got through it surprisingly well. “Now, let’s do it even faster, and I’m not going to play the melody with you anymore,” he said, and Lawry survived being pushed beyond reasonable limits.
Janis Siegel, with whom Hersch has recorded several albums, has come to rely on Hersch’s scrutiny and candor. “Fred has pushed me to become a better musician, a better singer — in ways, a better person,” she says. “He doesn’t have time to goof around. If I want some straight-ahead feedback, I go to him. People will tell you what you want to hear, or they’ll be not-quite truthful, because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but Fred’s allegiance is to the music.”
In the recording studio, “Fred always knows what he wants,” says his longtime engineer, Michael MacDonald, with whom Hersch has made more than 40 albums. “If you ask him a question, he’ll never say, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He always has an idea.” Twenty-five years ago, MacDonald says: “Fred was a petulant, stubborn, incredibly talented egomaniac eccentric who would dominate a recording session. He was always playing brilliantly, but it was a whole lot more egocentric. Since his illnesses, he’s matured musically and also emotionally, in saying, ‘Everything I do has to have meaning and has to be my best game, because I don’t have a lot of time.’ I’ve seen a huge change in him with the illnesses — just the stop fooling around, stop wasting time.
“Fred’s ego is enormous,” MacDonald adds, dragging out the word. “But when he’s sitting at the piano, you don’t hear the ego. You only hear his humanity.”
HERSCH PLAYED a handful of gigs in New York last year as he grew stronger, and one was a run at the Jazz Standard with the Pocket Orchestra, to introduce the group’s first CD. In addition to Hersch’s piano, the instrumentation of this orchestra includes trumpet, percussion and voice. Like a great many things in Fred Hersch’s life and work, the Pocket Orchestra defies expectations.
“He looks good,” said Fred’s brother, Hank, who left a busy late night at work to go to the Jazz Standard with their mother, Flo Hoffheimer (who is divorced from her sons’ father and remarried). Now 80, she flew in from Cincinnati that day for the occasion. The club was packed. Twenty or 30 people without reservations huddled outside the entrance hopefully, and the house manager waved some of them into the bar area as Hersch shuffled onto the bandstand with the Pocket Orchestra.
As he took his seat at the piano, Hersch fluffed the back of the silky mushroom brown shirt he was wearing, so the bottom of the fabric draped over the bench as the tails of a tuxedo would. He glanced at the audience for a second when he did this, and gave a little smile. He shook his shoulders loose and wiggled his bottom into a position he liked. Then he began to play, constructing a tight pattern of dense, repeating chords. He lowered his head slowly till it hovered just half a foot from the top of the piano, and he appeared to shrink into his clothes. Hersch, slim all his adult life, was about 15 pounds under his usual weight. His cheeks were hollow, and his skin was gray, though his eyes were bright and his playing was strong. In fact, in its emotive urgency, expressive range and beauty, Hersch’s music had rarely been so potent.
After the second number, a lightly bopping composition called “Lee’s Dream,” which Hersch wrote in tribute to the alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, Hersch’s mother leaned back in the corner banquette where she was sitting with Hank and a few others, and she said, to no one in particular, “Fred was such a fat little thing.”
At the end of the set, she elaborated: “When Fred was a boy, he was the most beautiful, chubby little thing you ever laid eyes on — he was a blimp with appendages. And one day when he was 3 years old, I was pushing him around in a cart in the grocery store, and a woman — a stranger, I had never met her before — saw Fred, and she stopped in her tracks, and she looked at Fred, and she said, ‘And who do you belong to?’
“And Fred looked at her, and he said: ‘I don’t belong to anybody. I belong to myself.’
“That was Fred,” his mother said, “and it still is.”
David Hajdu is the music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of “Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn,” among other books on music and culture.