“When Hersch performs at the piano, he pours himself into the music like liquid into a vessel. He becomes a channel for the expression and development of musical ideas, and he never just bangs out notes—like the great Bill Evans, he is always reaching for something fresh and new.”-Victor L. Schermer (All About Jazz) 

Fred Hersch©Matthew Sussman

One of the gems of programming of KBEM Jazz 88 radio has been its REEL Jazz film series, initiated two years ago with almost monthly screenings of independent films exploring a variety of jazz themes and musicians. The next screening (November 5th, 6:30 pm), Let Yourself Go: The Lives of Fred Hersch (2008), focuses on the amazing and challenging life of one of the true modern-day titans of jazz piano and jazz education. One of the first jazz musicians to come out as both gay and HIV Positive, Hersch’s disease recently progressed to AIDS. Yet, despite a near-fatal episode, he continues to tour, teach and record. German documentary filmmaker Katja Duregger followed Hersch for more than two years in eight different cities in the US and Europe. By shooting most of the material herself, Duregger was able to produce a very personal, intimate portrait, including interviews with some of Hersch’s closest associates as well as footage from performances, solo and with his acclaimed trio.   

Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch©Andrea Canter

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-five years, Fred Hersch’s numerous recordings have included work in solo, duo, trio and sextet formats; in tributes to Monk, Strayhorn, Evans, Jobim 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. Honors have included grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer, four composition residencies at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, a Guggenheim Fellowship 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. 

Among his many works, perhaps his most acclaimed has been the 2005 Leaves of Grass project, a large-scale suite setting Walt Whitman's poetry to music for two voices (Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry) and instrumental octet; the resulting Palmetto recording appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists. In 2006, he became the first pianist to have a solo week at the Village Vanguard. Although well-known for his trio recordings and tours, he has most recently been working with a larger improvisational ensemble dubbed The Pocket Orchestra. He also released his seventh solo recording (Fred Hersch Plays Jobim) to wide acclaim in summer 2009. 

First diagnosed as HIV Positive in the mid 80s and “out” since the early 90s, Fred Hersch has been an ardent spokesman and fund raiser for AIDS awareness and services. Despite periods of illness in recent years, he has produced and performed on four benefit recordings and at numerous concerts for the charities Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which have raised over $250,000 to date. In a recent interview for the SF Gate, he noted that “I've become the den mother for gay jazz musicians and a lot of musicians with AIDS...And for years I've talked about the value of being out, particularly as an artist, so you're not compartmentalizing your life and worrying about who knows what. Maintaining a closet is very expensive in terms of your psychology. It's a lot of effort." 

Living with AIDs over the past few years has required a lot of effort as well, and 2008 was a particularly devastating year for Fred Hersch. As he has recounted on his website, he spent eight weeks in a comatose or semi-comatose state, suffered from AIDS dementia for seven weeks, lost his voice for a period and was hospitalized with pneumonia and a gall bladder infection. Regaining his strength, he was determined to prove he was again able to perform, and made believers of everyone with an April residency at Jazz Standard featuring his new Pocket Orchestra. In an interview with Ted Panken (jazz.com), Hersch noted that “I feel the worst of it is behind me, and I'm in better health now than I've been in many years—according to my blood numbers, my weight is stable. I have projects to look forward to. Things are really good right now.”  

Let Yourself Go: Living With AIDS and Music

Fred Hersch©Hans Speekenbrink

Film maker Katja Duregger is a longtime jazz fan and amateur pianist herself, who first heard Hersch ten years ago on his solo recording, Live at Jordan Hall. She “was deeply touched and impressed,” she told All About Jazz recently. “After that I wanted to find out more about him...After that, I followed his other releases and my adoration grew... I soon realized how diverse his musical output is, and I appreciated his depth, his intelligence, and his emotional clarity. All this fascinated me. I also learned that he has been HIV positive for over 20 years and one of the few openly gay musicians in the mostly macho jazz scene.” Meeting via e-mail, their first meeting and taping was in March 2006, and the collaboration continued until the film was completed about a year ago. 

The end result, notes Hersch, provided an opportunity to be open about his health and music, but maybe with too much emphasis on the former. “I feel like to be open and honest is the best thing for me psychologically,” he told Panken, “and it's also something that other people might find hopeful or inspiring, to say, 'Yes, I deal with this every day,' 'No, it's not a death sentence,' 'Yes, I take a shitload of medications every day,' 'Yes, I have side effects,' 'Yes, I've had a terrible year of health problems'—having to completely rebuild my body. I think it would be dishonest of me not to talk about things... I think, if anything, the film, to me, focuses a bit too heavily on my health. I don't think it presents as wide a variety of my music as I would probably like. Part of it was due to rights clearances—it's very expensive to have Monk or Vernon Duke or whatever on a DVD. They couldn't afford it.” Consequently, and not regrettably, the film clips show Fred Hersch playing Fred Hersch.

Let Yourself Go will be screened at the Bryant-Lake Theater at 810 W. Lake Street in south Minneapolis, at 6:30 pm on November 5th. (Note early start time for this 2-hour film!) Seating is limited so contact Kevin Barnes at KBEM ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) to reserve a ticket, $10. Ted Panken’s full interview with Fred Hersch can be found at http://www.jazz.com/features-and-interviews/2009/5/19/in-conversation-with-fred-hersch; more on Fred at www.fredhersch.com  
 

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