 Photo by Peter Carni
Winner of a 2003
Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition,
performer, arranger, composer, and educator 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, then moved to New York where he quickly became a
first-call player. 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.
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—recently
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. Honors in addition to
his 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 students are many who have
become star performers themselves, including Brad Mehldau and Ethan
Iverson of the Bad Plus.
In addition to acclaimed trio releases
on Palmetto, Hersch recently completed his Leaves of Grass
project, a large-scale work setting Walt Whitman's poetry to music
for two voices (Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry) and instrumental octet;
the 2005 recoding (Palmetto) appeared on numerous “best of the
year” lists. He also appeared on a duo recording with opera star
Renee Fleming in summer 2005 (Haunted Heart, Decca), and this
winter released a highly acclaimed solo recording, Amsterdam: Live
at the Bimhuis (Palmetto). Earlier in 2006, he became the first
pianist to have a solo week at the Village Vanguard.
Over the past two years, Fred Hersch
has found a home for duo performance at Jazz Standard. 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.”
Of vocalist Nancy King, Concord artist Karrin Allyson
said, “She is, I think, one of the best singers that ever
walked the planet.” Similarly labeled “the
greatest living jazz singer” by Herb Ellis, King is noted for “a
supple voice, a flawless ear and the instincts of a true jazz
improviser"(The Oregonian).
Arriving in San Francisco from Springfield, OR in the 1960s,
she met future husband Sonny King at the Jazz Workshop and joined his
band. In addition to performing for the next two years at the
Workshop, she worked with Vince Guaraldi, John Handy, Sonny
Donaldson, and Flip Nunez in San Francisco, and studied with Jon
Hendricks. After moving to Las Vegas and then back to Oregon to raise
her sons, King recorded her first album and made some appearances in
New York before starting a collaboration with pianist/composer Steve
Christofferson, with whom she has performed on the west coast since
the 1980s . During the mid-90’s she was on the faculties of the
Stanford University Jazz Workshop, Bud Shank’s Centrum Jazz
Workshop and Jazz Camp West, and performed at festivals in France,
the U.S., Israel and Canada. She released Straight Into Your Heart
(Mons, 1997) with Christopherson and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra
and appeared with Ray Brown on his Some Of My Best Friends Are
Singers (Telarc, 1998), touring with Brown and his trio during
the next year.
Recent
collaborations include performances with Karrin Allyson and Elvis
Costello, as well as continued recordings with Steve Christofferson.
In 2001, King was inducted into the Oregon Jazz Society’s Hall of
Fame. Notes vocalist Mark Murphy, “Her singing flies between
our ears with a certainty of inevitable rightness that is at least...
simply thrilling.”
“Simply
thrilling” should be an apt description for the duo appearance of
Fred Hersch and Nancy King at Jazz Standard, May 9-11. Don’t miss
this celebration of the CD that is sure to be one of the top releases
of 2006.
For reservations or information, visit
www.jazzstandard.net.
For more information about these artists, see:
www.fredhersch.com
and www.nancykingjazz.com
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Thursday, 08 January 2009
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