"Hersch has honed a solo piano style second to none in jazz"
--The New York Times

Photo by Peter Carni

This coming week, Fred Hersch will become the first pianist in the 70-year history of the Village Vanguard to hold a solo week-long residency, February 28-March 5. With the February 21^st release of his solo recording Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto), Hersch is launching a national tour, with upcoming appearances in Easton, PA (March 8^th at Lafayette College with Christopher O’Reilly), Kalamazoo (March 15^th at Western Michigan University); Grand Rapids (March 16^th at UICA), Baltimore (March 18^th at An Die Musik), and Boston (March 24^th at the Regatta Bar) before traveling to Europe. A week at the Vanguard should provide fans of solo piano plenty of opportunity to enjoy both the music of the recording and, more generally, the man Whitney Balliett (The New Yorker) described as “a poet of a pianist.”

Since his first appearances as leader and soloist over twenty years ago, jazz piano master/composer/arranger/educator Fred Hersch has earned critical accolades as “a master who plays it his way" (Ben Ratliff, The New York Times); “a pristine pianist with a poet’s soul--a pair of qualities that combine to especially dazzling effect" (Joan Anderman, The Boston Globe); "a brilliant technician, a thoughtful, elegant improviser and an artist with a curious ear” (Fernando Gonzalez, The Miami Herald); “...one of the leading lights of this generation's pianists” (Fred Bouchard, Jazz Times); “one of the most sensitive and genuinely lyrical players in jazz” (Bob Blumenthal, The Atlantic Monthly); and "...a constantly inventive soloist” (Leonard Feather, The Los Angeles Times.)

Fred Hersch began playing piano as a four-year-old in Cincinnati. His lifelong interest in popular song dates back to his family’s collections of Broadway original cast albums and his grandmother's sheet music. Despite his formal training in classical repertoire, at an early age he was already experimenting with improvisation and received his first training in jazz on the bandstands of Cincinnati. At the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Hersch studied with Jaki Byard among others, and graduated with honors in 1977. Moving to New York, he quickly became a first-call player and worked in solo and duo gigs at the late Bradley's. As a sideman, he appeared with saxophonists Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, and Jane Ira Bloom; flugelhornist Art Farmer; harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans; vibraphonist Gary Burton; and bassists Sam Jones and Charlie Haden.

The year 1984 was a milestone of multiple meanings for Fred Hersch—his first album as leader (Horizons, Concord) was released, and he was diagnosed with HIV. In the following two decades, he has continued an amazingly busy peforming, recording and teaching schedule while also serving as a passionate spokesman and fund-raiser for AIDS organizations. Hersch has produced and performed on four recordings for the charities Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Over the past twenty years, Fred Hersch’s numerous recordings have included his work with in solo, duo, and trio formats; in tributes to Monk, Strayhorn, Evans and other muses; and in both small and larger ensembles exploring free improvisation. His classical roots have not been overlooked—he has toured with concert pianist Christopher O'Reilly in a program entitled "Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos," and has combined talents with pianist Jeffrey Kahane and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, as well as sopranos Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw; he also has appeared as a soloist with orchestras across the U.S. and Europe. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Dr. Billy Taylor and on National Public Radio programs such as Morning Edition, Fresh Air, Studio 360, Prairie Home Companion, Jazz From Lincoln Center, Jazz Set, and Marian McPartland's popular Piano Jazz. Honors in addition to a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship have included grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer, four composition residencies at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, and the Gay and Lesbian American Music Award (GLAMA)—four times.

Teaching has always been a priority for Fred Hersch. A faculty member at the New England Conservatory for ten years, he has taught at The New School and Manhattan School of Music and is currently a visiting professor at Western Michigan University. Among his former students are many who have become star performers themselves, including Brad Mehldau and Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus.

In recent years, Hersch has worked with a variety of solo, ensemble, and vocal projects. In 2001, Nonesuch released an ambitious, 3-CD set featuring a set of original solos, a set of standards, and a set of Cole Porter tunes, Songs Without Words. He issued a pair of recordings with his adventurous trio of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nashiet Waits, focusing more on his own compositions-- Live at the Village Vanguard (Palmetto, 2002) and The Fred Hersch Trio + 2 (Palmetto, 2004), with guests Ralph Alessi (trumpet and flugelhorn) and Tony Malaby (tenor). Continuing his affinity for vocalists, Hersch collaborated with Norma Winstone on Songs and Lullabies (Sunnyside, 2003), all original Hersch compositions with Winstone’s lyrics. A recent project, Leaves of Grass (Palmetto, 2005), is a large-scale work setting Walt Whitman's poetry to music for two voices (Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry) and instrumental octet, showcased in a March 2005 performance at the new Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Many “Top Ten” lists for 2005 included this hauntingly beautiful recording. A recording of jazz standards with soprano Renée Fleming was also released on Decca in 2005. Last fall, Hersch previewed his new solo tour with a 50^th birthday celebration/performance at Zankel Hall in Manhattan.

I have had the opportunity to hear Fred Hersch in solo, duo, and trio formats, including a late night solo set at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis last summer. He is a vastly versatile artist with a highly inventive approach to time and harmony, always infused with a melodic lyricism that can belie the complexity of his constructions and interpretations. His eclecticism has been described by Jazz Times’ Nate Chinen as fusing the diverse influences of “Ornette Coleman and Cole Porter, Bach and Bill Evans, Johnny Mathis and Ahmad Jamal.” To that list I would quickly add Monk and Jarrett. Noted Terry Teachout in the New York Times, he “improvises with the sharp conceptual clarity of a classical composer; instead of merely skimming atop the familiar chord changes of standard songs, he forges them into rigorously structured, highly personal re-creations.”

Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis, featuring orginal works as well as covers of Monk, Rowles, McHugh, Carmichael, and Jobim, is not Hersch’s first solo outing; in fact I recently enjoyed his Live at Maybeck Hall recording made back in 1991. But what may add to the immediacy and vibrancy of the new disc is the circumstances surrounding its creation-- recorded without his knowledge ahead of time, on a brand-new nine-foot Steinway, on the last night of a ten-day solo European tour. Hersch notes that there is a certain un-self-consciousness about the performances on this disc that is extremely difficult for me (or almost anyone) to achieve in a recording studio. I had one of those magical nights where everything felt right.”

This week, in New York at the Village Vanguard, there will be seven magical nights.

Fred Hersch’s solo piano residency at the Village Vanguard, February 28-March 5; tickets at www.villagevanguard.com. Visit www.fredhersch.com for additional schedule.