A New Trio Album from Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch at his keyboard (photograph by Roberto Cifarelli, courtesy of ECM Records)

Some readers may recall that 2019 ended with a major release of recordings of jazz pianist Fred Hersch. This was a Palmetto Records box set entitled The Fred Hersch Trio: 10 Years / 6 Discs. Since that time, I have done my best to keep up with his albums, which included his move to the ECM label. Today, that label celebrated his return to trio jazz with the release of The Surrounding Green. This is an album of seven tracks of Hersch performing only with Drew Gress on bass and drummer Joey Baron.

What struck me about this release was that only three of the tracks were Hersch originals: “Plainsong,” “The Surrounding Green,” and “Anticipation.” Mind you, there are also tracks of some of Hersch’s favorite composers, including George Gershwin (“Embraceable You”) and Egberto Gismonti (“Palhaço”). On the other hand, there are two composers that I have not previous encountered on Hersch albums. One is Charlie Haden (who is also an ECM artist). The other is Ornette Coleman, although I may have heard a Coleman selection when Hersch led a trio performance in Herbst Theatre for San Francisco Performance in February of 2015.

That selection is “Law Years,” and it dates back to Coleman’s Science Fiction album, whose eight tracks were recorded by Columbia in the fall of 1971. It was originally recorded as a quintet with a more raucous rhetoric delivered by trumpeter Bobby Bradford and Dewey Redman on tenor saxophone. Hersch, on the other hand, was more interested in the driving rhythm, keeping his dynamics significantly more understated. Those familiar with past Hersch albums probably know that this is the way he prefers to roll, but his preference for understatement continues to reveal any number of adventurous twists and turns for the attentive listener.

A Song Cycle Composed by Fred Hersch

Cover of the album being discussed

This Friday will see the release of Suspended in Time, which may mark the first time that pianist Fred Hersch has participated in a recording as accompanist. The music for this performance is a song cycle (which is the album’s title), whose music was composed by Hersch. The text is by Randi Charleston, who gives a spoken performance on the fourth track, entitled “Fever Dreams.” Vocalists Kate McGarry and Gabrielle Stravelli share the remaining six tracks, each performing on three of them. As is so often the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page to process pre-orders.

Those following this site for some time probably know that, after my first encounter with one of Hersch’s instrumental albums, I have made it a point to follow his work as assiduously as possible. It is therefore more than a little painful to confess that there is absolutely nothing on the new release that seized my attention, let alone sustained it! Mind you, Hersch’s keyboard work is as reliable as ever; but there is no way in which it can elevate an attentive listener above Charleston’s tripe, whether it is recited or sung. Thus, while I can try my best to relish Hersch’s efforts as both composer and performer, I find myself ultimately drowned in a sea of insipidity.

Meanwhile, I shall wait patiently for Hersch’s next instrumental venture.

ECM Releases Fred Hersch’s Latest Solo Album

courtesy of DL Media Music

According to my records, my last account of an album of performances by jazz pianist Fred Hersch appeared on this site at the very end of 2022; and it involved the recording of his performances with esperanza spalding at the Village Vanguard on October 19, 20, and 21 of 2018. The end of last week saw the release of Silent, Listening, his latest solo album with ECM based on recordings made in Lugano in May of 2023. This album serves up seven new original works, one of which (as might be expected) bears the title of the album. The other tracks include “The Star-Crossed Lovers” (also known as “Pretty Girl”), composed jointly by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Russ Freeman’s “The Wind,” “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise” by Sigmund Romberg, and Alec Wilder’s “The Winter of My Discontent.”

The advance material for this album cited Hersch’s “in-the-moment spontaneity.” This applies to his interpretations of the composed selections as much as it does to the tracks of the originals. Indeed, it would not surprise me to learn that none of those originals were documented in notation; and, when the polyphony gets thick (as it often does), I wonder if anyone would be skilled enough to transcribe such a document.

Over the course of my many years of listening to Hersch albums, the musicologist in me has finally given way to the in-the-moment listener. In other words, rather like a photograph, any Hersch track amounts to a “snapshot” of how he chose to be making music at a particular time. Were he to perform the piece again at a later time, aspects of the tune may still be there; but, in all probability, the “snapshot” would not be identical. In that respect I regret not having had more opportunities to listen to Hersch in performance, allowing me to appreciate such in-the-moment listening to a greater extent.

Absent those opportunities, I have found that, each time I listen to a recording, I discover new perspectives emerging from each of the album tracks, meaning that this new Silent, Listening album allows for in-the-moment experiences of its own with each subsequent encounter.

Igor Levit Concludes Residency with Solo Recital

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, pianist Igor Levit concluded his tenure as San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Artist-in-Residence with a solo recital that concluded this season’s Great Performers Series. The first half of his program consisted of a coupling of two collections of relatively short pieces. The first of these was a selections of six chorale preludes that Johannes Brahms had composed for organ, arranged for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni. This early twentieth-century arrangement was coupled with Fred Hersch’s second “book” of a collection entitled Songs Without Words, composed in 2022.

The second half of the program began much later in the twentieth century with Zoltán Kocsis’ 1978 arrangement for solo piano of the opening prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. This was followed by Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata, composed about half a decade before Wagner’s opera. Levit’s one encore selection continued this “reverse traversal” of the nineteenth century with a performance of the third of the D. 780 collection of six solo piano compositions given the overall title Moments musicaux by composer Franz Schubert.

Over the course of his SFS visit, Levit traversed a repertoire that was as highly imaginative as it was extensive. He had begun his visit with the most conventional of his offerings, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 73 (fifth) piano concerto in the key of E-flat major, often known as the “Emperor.” His Liszt selection, coupled with its encore, presented a return to this domain of familiar repertoire. Mind you, the Liszt sonata can be an unwieldy beast; and too many pianists present it simply for the sake of letting the audience know how skillfully they can jump through all of the composer’s fiery hoops.

In that context Levit should be credited for trying to present the score as music, rather than some kind of Olympic challenge. He provided one of the clearer accounts of how this single-movement composition can be parsed into a sequence of episodes that constitute a coherent narrative. This established the encore as a perfect context, contrasting Liszt with a composer who, in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller, knew how to make “more and more with less and less” in his cycles of short pieces.

On the other side of the sonata, so to speak, Levit introduced the second half of the program with a composer that excelled in making more and more with more and more. The Tristan prelude is a perfect example unfolding a rich repertoire of themes couched in a series of harmonic progressions that never (even in the final measure) establish a sense of finality. (Mind you, this is a prelude to an opera with a very long first act!) What struck me as important, however, had more to do with the way in which Levit could negotiate the dynamics to reflect on the original orchestral version than with how Kocsis had telescoped Wagner’s score down to the resources of a single keyboard.

In the first half of the program, I was particularly drawn to how easily Hersch could shift away from jazz piano gigs into a more formal recital setting. As his notes explained, his Songs Without Words compositions were “written out completely,” in contrast to the usual jazz “charts.” Each of the six short pieces was endowed with its own distinctive “personality” in Levit’s interpretation; and I have to say that I was delighted with the freshness Hersch brought to a genre usually associated with the nineteenth century.

Cover of Levit’s album that couples chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms (from the album’s Amazon.com Web page)

I was equally struck by how the entire program had been framed with Brahms at the beginning the Liszt at the conclusion. Busoni’s arrangements of Brahms’ organ music were as perceptive of those he had composed based on the organ chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some readers probably know that I have been writing about Levit’s recordings for some time; and, in the collection I have accumulated, I particularly liked how he had the chorale preludes of Bach and Brahms reflect each other in his Encounter album. Levit seems to believe that, where sacred music is concerned, Brahms deserves just as much attention as Bach; and last night I was particularly delighted with the case he made for Brahms.

Full spalding-Hersch Album Ready for Release

As I wrote yesterday, five new albums that have seized my attention are scheduled for release this coming Friday, January 6. The second of these was actually anticipated this past June with a preview release of jazz pianist Fred Hersch performing with esperanza spalding. The performances took place at the Village Vanguard on October 19, 20, and 21 of 2018; and five tracks from those performances were released as an EP whose sales benefitted the Jazz Foundation of America in its efforts to assist members of the jazz community impacted by the pandemic. Those tracks were “But Not For Me,” “Dream of Monk,” “Girl Talk,” “Some Other Time,” and “Loro.”

As first reported earlier this month, the full album includes three additional tracks, Charlie Parker’s “Little Suede Shoes,” Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” and “A Wish,” composed by Hersch for lyrics by Norma Winstone. This makes for a generous profile of Hersch’s repertoire. Most, if not all, of those selections were probably performed by Hersch at the Vanguard in other settings. I have a personal fondness for “Dream of Monk,” which Hersch performed at the Vanguard in February of 2012, leading a trio whose other members were John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums.

“Dream of Monk” was originally composed for My Coma Dreams, a multimedia theater piece inspired by a medically induced coma that Hersch sustained in 2008 when he was hospitalized after losing the ability to get out of his own bathtub. The dream of Monk is part of the narrative, and it involves Monk and Hersch challenged by an unknown authority figure to see who can compose and document a new tune faster. Those familiar with the Monk canon will appreciate how that composer’s tropes float in and out of Hersch’s own composition. He would later add the words that spalding would sing during their duo performance at the Vanguard.

All spoken commentary on the 2018 recordings is provided by spalding. This includes what amounts to her talking back to Ira Gershwin about some of his puzzling turns of phrase in “But Not For Me.” This came across as a playful reflection, but it left me wondering whether Gershwin would have balked at what he felt was pure chutzpah. Personally, I took this as a somewhat poignant reminder that turns of phrase seen as clever during the twentieth century now come across as cryptically dated. I was happier when she put words aside, turning instead to the imaginative vocalizations in her interpretation of Egberto Gismonti’s “Loro.”

As has already been announced on this site, Amazon.com has created a Web page for pre-ordering the complete account of the Hersch-spalding tracks.

spalding and Hersch at the Village Vanguard

esperanza spalding and Fred Hersch on the cover of their new duo album

Some readers may be aware that I have done my best to keep up with the work of jazz pianist Fred Hersch, knowing full well that I shall never arrive as a “complete works” account. Indeed, that interest predates much of what I have written on this site and was probably triggered by a concert he presented for San Francisco Performances in February of 2016, back when I was writing for Examiner.com. The fact is that Hersch’s efforts have done much to keep me busy, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, it was only about a month after after lockdown conditions were imposed that I experienced my first streaming experience of Hersch. That was The Ballad of Fred Hersch, a documentary made by Charlotte Largarde and Carrie Lozano in 2016. This was followed by the release of a benefit EP of recordings made at the Village Vanguard on October 19, 20, and 21 of 2018, when Hersch, a Vanguard “regular,” gave a duo performance with vocalist esperanza spalding. Proceeds from the sales of that EP benefitted the Jazz Foundation of America in its efforts to assist members of the jazz community impacted by the pandemic.

The five tracks on that EP now contribute to a full album entitled Alive at the Village Vanguard. The EP tracks were “But Not For Me,” “Dream of Monk,” “Girl Talk,” “Some Other Time,” and “Loro.” The added tracks are Charlie Parker’s “Little Suede Shoes,” Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence,” and “A Wish,” composed by Hersch for lyrics by Norma Winstone. The album will be released this coming January 6; and, as expected, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Those that follow the activities of the San Francisco Symphony probably know that Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen selected spalding as one of his Collaborative Partners. However, according to my records, her last appearance in Davies took place at the beginning of October of 2021 in its first post-pandemic program, which was given the title “Re-Opening Night.” Personally, I miss the agility of her vocal work, which could hold its own in Davies as well as it could at the Vanguard. On the other hand Davies is too cavernous for the intimate interleaving of voice and piano that makes Alive at the Village Vanguard a listening experience that is both compelling and refreshing.

I have given the tracks on this new release a generous number of listening experiences, and I encounter something new on each of those occasions. Both Hersch and spalding clearly put a lot of thought into preparing and then capturing the tracks on this album. I suspect that I shall be catching up with all of that thought for some time to come.

Fred Hersch Debuts on ECM with Enrico Rava

This coming Friday will see the first release of a Fred Hersch album since this past January. That previous album, Breath by Breath was a major undertaking, devoted almost entirely to an eight-movement suite entitled The Sati Suite. This involved pianist Hersch leading a trio consisting of Drew Gress on bass and Jochen Rueckert on drums; and they, in turn, were joined by the members of the Crosby Street String Quartet: violinists Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violist Lois Martin, and cellist Jody Redhage Ferber.

courtesy of DL Media Music

The new album, which will be released by ECM this coming Friday, is entitled The Song is You. It swings the pendulum to the other extreme. Hersch is joined only by Italian Enrico Rava playing flugelhorn. As is often the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

Rava has been recording for ECM since the Seventies; but this album marks Hersch’s first appearance on the label, which has made a reputation for adventurous tastes in both the jazz and classical genres. Both Hersch and Rava contribute an original composition to the track list, with another track devoted to a duo improvisation. As expected, there is also a track for the song composed by Jerome Kern after which the album is named. The other tune in that genre is George Bassman’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” which was first recorded by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra. The opening track is Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Retrato em Branco e Preto” (portrait in black and white); and the album concludes with two familiar tunes associated with Thelonious Monk: “Misterioso” and “’Round Midnight.”

Taken as a whole, this album captures duet playing at its most intimate. The flugelhorn has a darker sound than either the trumpet or the cornet. This makes it more suitable for the rhetoric of quietude, a rhetorical stance that is very much in Hersch’s comfort zone. Arthur Schwartz’ tune “Alone Together” comes to mind; and I was a bit surprised that it was not included among all of the Hersch tracks currently in my collection. On the other hand the duo’s approach to “Misterioso” could almost be taken as a memorial encomium to Monk himself.

From a personal point of view, I would not classify this as an “everyday listening experience” album. I doubt that I shall encounter these tracks over the course of my radio and streamed encounters with the jazz repertoire. However, on those occasions when one is inclined to introspection, these performances offer just the right context for the disposition.

New Hersch Album Inspired by Meditation

This coming Friday Palmetto Records will release the first album to be recorded by Fred Hersch in a studio setting since the onset of pandemic conditions. The title of the album is Breath by Breath, which reflects the fact that most of the album is devoted to an eight-movement suite inspired by Hersch’s meditation practice. There is also a ninth track, entitled “Pastorale,” which Hersch composed as an homage to Robert Schumann. As is the usual practice, Amazon.com has created a Web page to process pre-orders.

The title of the suite is The Sati Suite. This reflects Hersch’s approach to meditation, since sati is the Pali word for “mindfulness” or “awareness.” The scoring brings a jazz piano trio together with a string quartet. The trio that Hersch leads consists of Drew Gress on bass and Jochen Rueckert on drums. The strings are the members of the Crosby Street String Quartet: violinists Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violist Lois Martin, and cellist Jody Redhage Ferber. For the sixth movement of the suite, “Mara,” the ensemble is joined by percussionist Rogerio Boccato. “Mara” is the name of the god that tempted the Buddha with wine, women, and wealth.

Some readers may recall that, at the end of October of 2020, I wrote an article entitled “Bland is Not a Remedy for Pandemic Blues,” which established a theme that I would subsequently invoke when encountering albums that seemed more interested in soothing the mind, rather than stimulating it. Hersch’s musical reflections on meditation are anything but bland. If anything, they reflect on how Hersch has described his own approach to meditation:

Meditation is not about not emptying your mind; it's about observation. The phrase I like to use is, “relax, allow and observe.” When I meditate it’s about recognizing sensations or thoughts as they come in and out, observing them and realizing that they're just phenomena. The brain thinks, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In many respects that pairing of “allow” and “observe” is as relevant to making music as it is to meditation.

Events in a symphony orchestra, under the constraints of score pages, sections leaders, and a conductor, require every individual musician to cultivate his/her/their own practices of allowing and observing, bringing the actions taken by the one into conjunction with those of the many. On Breath by Breath one can appreciate those practices when the string quartet is playing on its own, presumably working with through-composed parts that Hersch created (possibly in consultation with the four players). For that matter, over the course of the entire suite, one begins to appreciate the extent to which a dialog between the quartet and Hersch’s trio is evolving. Finally, if allowing and observing guide the interplay of musicians listening and performing, they also provide a “strategy” for those listening to this album. That being the case, then perhaps the concluding “Pastorale” is a result of Hersch’s own allowing and listening to Schumann’s piano music, resulting in an evocation of the Schumann repertoire, rather than an exploration of specific thematic content.

Fred Hersch Begins Week of Live Streams

Fred Hersch playing his first The Year That Was selection (from his YouTube Video Web page)

Last week I announced that Fred Hersch would devote this entire week to his new project The Year That Was. For the seven days of this week, Hersch will post a “Tune of the Day” video through his Facebook Web site at 10 a.m. (Pacific time). While my schedule will not allow me to attend the live-stream launch of every one of these tunes, I wanted to make it a point to “bear witness” to the launch of this project.

The launch was a smooth one. As was announced last week, each day listeners will be asked to support a selected charity. The “beneficiary” of today’s performance is Feeding America. Hersch’s musical selection was the Beatles tune “In My Life.” The duration of the entire video is nine minutes, over the course of which Hersch explored his own stylistic interpretations of that tune with minimal references to the contributions by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Basically, the tune allows for a diversity of different stylistic approaches, and Hersch presents an engaging set of reflections on his own perspectives.

This performance is now available for viewing through the Videos Web page on Hersch’s Facebook site.

Fred Hersch Announces Week of Live Streams

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

This morning I realized that I have not written about jazz pianist Fred Hersch since this past December, when I discussed the release of his solo album Songs from Home. That album was the result of what Hersch called his “Tune of the Day” project for coping with the impact of COVID-19. This morning Hersch announced a new project, timed to mark the first anniversary of the beginning of lockdown conditions (imposed here in San Francisco on March 7) and the death of a close friend due to COVID-19, which took place during the first week of that lockdown.

The title of the new project is The Year That Was. It will run for one week beginning this coming Monday, March 15, and running through to the following Sunday, March 21. On each of those seven days at 10 a.m., Hersch will post a “Tune of the Day” to Facebook Live through his Facebook Web site.

In conjunction with each performance, Hersch will ask his listeners to support a charity he has selected for that particular day. Those beneficiary organizations have already been selected: Feeding America, Jazz Foundation of America, International Rescue Committee, Haitian Alliance for Global Health, the Grammy Foundation’s MusiCares, UNICEF and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The musical works will be selected based on occasions of personal resonance over the last twelve months. At one end of the chronology will be Johann Sebastian Bach. At the other end will be more popular tunes by composers such as James Taylor and Marvin Gaye, which Hersch has found conducive to his approaches to improvisation.

Fred Hersch’s Solos in Quarantine

It recently occurred to me that there is an aspect of this site that amounts to a reflection on how Samuel Pepys used his diary to provide an account of the progress of the Great Plague of London. This was clearly a very personal account, telling us more about how Pepys conducted himself under lockdown conditions rather than a systematic analysis of plague conditions. To a great extent, many of my accounts of both audio and video recordings entail similar reflections on how performing musicians are dealing with the impact of COVID-19.

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

I spent this morning listening to the latest solo album from jazz pianist Fred Hersch entitled Songs from Home. When lockdown was first imposed, Hersch responded with his “Tune of the Day” project, uploading a single track to Facebook day-by-day for almost two months. In many respects this paralleled classical pianist Anyssa Neumann’s project to make a video performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 set of “Goldberg” variations by uploading videos of the individual variations on a similar day-by-day schedule. Like Bach’s variations, there is considerable diversity in both Hersch’s selections and his styles of interpretation. However, Songs from Home sounds more like a free-association project in contrast to many of the architectural foundations found in BWV 988.

My guess is that Hersch could have called his album My Favorite Things had that phrase not already been indelibly associated with Oscar Hammerstein II and The Sound of Music (not to mention the radical rethinking of Richard Rogers that became a calling card for John Coltrane). What is likely to strike the attentive listener is just how much diversity there is in Hersch’s “favorite things.” At one end we have “After You’ve Gone,” which dates all the way back to 1918 and was sung by the likes of both Sophie Tucker and Bessie Smith. At the other end Hersch serves up his own compositions, “West Virginia Rose” and “Sarabande.” (There is also the Scottish folk song “The Water is Wide,” whose lyrics date back to the seventeenth century and whose tune may well be even older.)

The only track that gives me pause is Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.” In 1968 one could appreciate the poignancy of a telephone worker up at the top of one of those poles eavesdropping on the voice of a woman “on the line,” imagining her to be the solution to his ongoing problem of loneliness. These days such eavesdropping would be viewed as a dangerous obsession, if not a psychopathic one. In the world the Internet has made, it is not that difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on anyone else, making the risk of sociopathic consequences much greater than they were almost half a century ago.

Fred Hersch’s Theater Piece Now on YouTube

This past Friday Fred Hersch uploaded to YouTube a video of a performance of My Coma Dreams in its entirety, approximately 90 minutes in duration. Those that follow this site regularly know that the title refers to a medically induced coma that Hersch sustained in 2008 when he was hospitalized after losing the ability to get out of his own bathtub. The narrative begins with events leading up to his hospitalization and concludes with his experience of a physical therapy session after he had regained consciousness.

Michael Winther narrating Herschel Garfein’s text of My Coma Dreams (photograph by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

The script was  written by Herschel Garfein, who directed what amounted to an amalgam of a monodrama for a narrator embedded in an instrumental ensemble augmenting a jazz combo with a string quartet. Hersch composed the music for that ensemble, performing (as expected) at the piano with Gregg Kallor serving as conductor. The text embodied two distinct voices, both performed by Michael Winther, who also sang the vocal numbers from the score. The primary voice is that of Hersch’s partner, Scott Morgan, while Hersch’s own voice is cited at critical moments in the narrative.

Hersch’s extended combo for this performance included Ralph Alessi on trumpet and flugelhorn, Mike Christianson on trombone, Steven Lugerner on oboe and clarinet, Adam Kolker on flute, clarinet and tenor saxophone, John Hébert on bass, and John Hollenbeck on percussion. The string quartet consisted of violinists Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violist Ron Lawrence, and cellist  Dave Eggar, with Hammann shifting to viola to give a duo performance with Hersch during one episode of the narrative. The music and text were supplemented by video projections of both static and animated images.

Watching this video is no easy matter. Garfein’s script provides an almost clinical account of the entire experience without ever confounding the listener with excessive technical language. At the same time he personalizes the narration with several informal digressions. The one with the greatest impact describes St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, enhanced by a riff on Vincent de Paul himself and the Daughters of Charity that followed him. All of this is delivered by, in the words of the script, “a Jew from Cincinnati.” (There is a bit of irony here, since Cincinnati is the city in which Reform Judaism was founded.) Thus, while the narrative itself is intense, the script has enough “sidebars” to make the journey bearable.

That said, I have to confess that, around 60 minutes into the performance, I began to wonder whether I would make it to the end without drifting into sidebars of my own thoughts. I can appreciate why the script was written to deliver the entire narrative without interruption. However, one of the prime virtues of the music is that it encourages the listener to “stay the course.” From my own point of view, what I found particularly interesting was how Hersch’s score reflected the influences of Thelonious Monk, almost as if the Monk’s ghost was a third character in the narrative itself, whose voice was delivered by Hersch’s piano, rather than Winther.

When it comes to recommending My Coma Dreams as a viewing experience, I am reminded of a preconcert talk that Scott Foglesong gave for the San Francisco Symphony. The talk had been devoted to what is probably the most despondent of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich; and Foglesong confessed that he could not really invite the audience to “enjoy” this music. Instead, he concluded by wishing “The Force be with you.” That is probably the right mindset for experiencing My Coma Dreams, and it is definitely worth the effort.

Fred Hersch to Video Stream his Theater Piece

Fred Hersch (photograph by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

Readers may recall that last March I wrote about The Ballad of Fred Hersch, a documentary made by Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozano in 2016, which had been released for free video streaming. I appreciated the amount of time the film devoted to My Coma Dreams, which I had regarded as Hersch’s most ambitious effort. The title referred to a medically induced coma that Hersch sustained in 2008 and his retrospective impressions after regaining consciousness.

The work itself could best be called a jazz theater piece. Hersch composed a score that was organized around a script written by Herschel Garfein, who directed what amounted to an amalgam of a monodrama for a narrator embedded in an instrumental ensemble augmenting a jazz combo with a string quartet. Following the premiere performance in New York, Hersch and Garfein took the show on tour; and it was hosted by San Francisco Performances at the end of October of 2011.

A video of the entire production was made; and, as a follow-up to the streaming of The Ballad of Fred Hersch, that video will be made available for free streaming, beginning of Friday, July 17. The URL for this video has not yet been created; but it should be sufficient to search YouTube for “My Coma Dreams” and “Fred Hersch.” As might be anticipated, this video will be best experienced with stereo audio from either headphones or speakers.

Michael Winter will present Garfein’s text, serving as both actor and singer. Hersch will play piano, and the string quartet will consist of violinists Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violist Ron Lawrence, and cellist  Dave Eggar. Hersch’s extended combo will include Ralph Alessi on trumpet and flugelhorn, Mike Christianson on trombone, Steven Lugerner on oboe and clarinet, Adam Kolker on flute, clarinet and tenor saxophone, John Hébert on bass, and John Hollenbeck on percussion.

Spalding and Hersch Release Benefit EP

Esperanza Spalding and Fred Hersch preparing for a performance (photograph by Christopher Drukker, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

In October of 2018, jazz vocalist Esperanza Spalding give a series of concerts at the Village Vanguard accompanied only by Fred Hersch at the piano. An album based on those performances has not yet been “officially” released. However, five of the songs that Spalding performed have been collected on an EP, which is being distributed exclusively for download through Bandcamp. All proceeds from sales through the end of this month will benefit the Jazz Foundation of America in its current efforts to assist members of the jazz community impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The “official” price is $17, but the Web page is set up to allow additional donations encouraged on a pay-what-you-wish basis.

The album is a “rough mix,” meaning that the recordings made on site have not been subjected to editing. Each of the songs allows both Spalding and Hersch to explore improvisations that are as adventurous as they are generous. Of greatest interest is “Dream of Monk,” which the two of them have been performing ever since they have been giving duo gigs. It would be unfair to call Hersch’s score a pastiche of music composed by Thelonious Monk, due to the elegant ways in which motifs from different Monk compositions keep bumping into each other. The result is thus more like one of those paraphrases by Franz Liszt than a “Monk medley.” Hersch then added a vocal line setting his own words, which constitute their own reflections on Monk’s legacy. The clarity of Spalding’s delivery allows the informed listener to drink in every subtle evocation of that legacy.

The most traditional of the tracks is “But Not For Me,” a collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin. This is a far cry from the rather straightforward approach this tune took in serving the narrative of the musical Girl Crazy; and the liberties that Spalding takes with Ira’s words are, to say the least, over the top. in Neal Hefti’s “Girl Talk” Spalding indulges in a speculative spoken introduction that wanders into territory that throws Bobby Troup’s lyrics into a whole new light, while Hersch provides just the right deadpan riffs to make sure that Spalding will eventually get back to the tune. Payback then ensues as Hersch lets loose on his own adventurous improvisations on Jule Styne’s tune for “Some Other Time” (not to be confused with the tune that Leonard Bernstein wrote for On the Town). Finally, Egberto Gismonti’s “Loro” provides Spalding with the last burst of adventurous improvisation in her scat singing.

Personally, I did not find anything “rough” in the production of this release. Each of the tracks has its own way of conveying the immediacy of the performance. As far as I am concerned, no further polishing is necessary!

A New Album of Brian Landrus’ Low-Register Jazz

2015 photograph of Brian Landrus with his preferred instruments (photograph by Vince Segalla, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

For Now, the tenth album featuring Brian Landrus, who favors the lower registers of the wind family, was originally scheduled for release one week from today. However, as can be seen from the above hyperlink, the album is currently available for purchase from Amazon.com. This may have something to do with an agreement between either BlueLand Records or the company’s distributor to compensate for the fact that all deliveries are taking more time than usual.

The album has thirteen tracks, one by Bronisław Kaper (“Invitation,” originally composed for the 1950 film A Life of Her Own), two by Thelonious Monk (“’Round Midnight” and “Ruby, My Dear”), and the remaining ten by Landrus himself. He leads a “core combo,” whose rhythm section consists of Fred Hersch on piano, Drew Gress on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. There is also a “guest appearance” by trumpeter Michael Rodriguez and a string quartet consisting of violinists Sara Caswell (leader) and Joyce Hamman, violist Lois Martin, and cellist Jody Redhage-Ferber.

That diversity of instrumentation allows for an equal range of diversity across Landrus’ own compositions. Nevertheless, given my particular interest in Hersch’s keyboard work, I have to say that, for my own listening, the album saves the best for the last, concluding with just Hersch and Landrus spinning out duo improvisations on “Ruby, My Dear.” On the other hand, my key disappointment involved the strings, since I had hoped that Landrus’ preference for the lower register would have allowed from a bit more from Martin and Redhage-Ferber than reinforcement of homophonic passages.

That said, Landrus’ command of instruments that many wind players find obstreperous runs the gamut from impressive to downright awesome. “’Round Midnight” is given a solo performance on bass clarinet, with harmonic progressions reinforced by frighteningly agile arpeggio work. The listener comes away with a new perspective on the melancholia behind the tune, but the edges of the improvisations are sharper than one would be inclined to expect. Ultimately, the track comes across as a bold exploration into unknown territory, recalling (for me at least) some of the riskier ventures I had encountered in Ben Goldberg’s PLAGUE DIARY recordings. In terms of album layout, on the other hand, having “Invitation” bop along freshly on the next track tends to burst the delicate bubble that rose out of Landrus’ approach to “’Round Midnight.”

In all fairness, any jazz that gets adventurous in the lower register tends to make for highly absorbing (if not compelling) listening; but there is much to be admired in Landrus’ ability to sustain those adventures over a thirteen-track album.

Free Streaming of Fred Hersch Documentary

Poster design for the documentary film being discussed (courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

My recent efforts to keep working while dealing with the impact of COVID-19 has led me to return to performances streamed through cyberspace. Yesterday’s effort involved my second visit to the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic since the restrictions of social distancing had been imposed. Today I had the opportunity to balance sources from the concert hall with those in the domain of jazz.

This morning I learned that The Ballad of Fred Hersch, a documentary made by Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozano in 2016, had been made available for free streaming courtesy of the directors. Regular readers probably know that Hersch’s recordings have received considerable attention on this site. However, in the overall context of Hersch’s biography, my listening experiences have come relatively late in his extraordinarily prodigious career. The scope of the film goes all the way back to his earliest engagements with Art Farmer in 1978 and goes all the way up to his now regular appearances at the Village Vanguard.

In spite of this breadth, the film also homes in on what was probably his most ambitious effort, My Coma Dreams. The title refers to a medically induced coma that Hersch sustained in 2008 and his retrospective impressions after regaining consciousness. The music he composed for this project was organized around a script written by Herschel Garfein, who directed what amounted to an amalgam of a monodrama for a narrator embedded in an instrumental ensemble augmenting a jazz combo with a string section. Some readers may recall that when this show was “taken on the road,” the tour included a performance in Herbst Theatre presented by San Francisco Performances.

In spite of this focus, Lagarde and Lozano are more than generous in providing opportunities to listen to Hersch making music, primarily as a soloist but also in combo settings. I have to say that the film had strong personal impact when attention was turned to the Village Vanguard. The Vanguard had provided me with my first opportunity to listen to Thelonious Monk play, back when I was a graduate student. I could barely get my head around what he was doing, and his very presence scared the daylights out of me. Nevertheless, I accepted the fact that the only way in which I could learn to listen to Monk’s music was to listen to Monk playing it.

There was thus a certain irony in that the account given of My Coma Dreams in this documentary included an extended section devoted to Hersch’s own take on Monk’s music. The title of that particular movement is “Dream of Monk;” and it involved a poignantly elegant deconstruction of “Crepuscule with Nellie.” I suspect that one of the reasons that Lagarde and Lozano allowed so much attention to this excerpt was because it amounted to an almost clinical account of efforts to recover memories in the wake of the coma experience.

My other major takeaway involved Hersch’s composition entitled “Whirl.” This shows up on several of his recordings and was also the title of the 2010 album that marked the first recorded appearance of his trio with John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums, a trio that has now been playing at the Vanguard for over a decade. I had always thought that the title referred to an underlying sense of dynamic energy; but, thanks to this cinematic biography, I now know that the music was inspired by the ballerina Suzanne Farrell!

Edward Simon’s Solo Jazz Piano SFP Salon

Yesterday evening in the Education Studio of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, San Francisco Performances (SFP) presented the third of the four programs in its Salon Series curated by pianist Edward Simon. This was Simon’s solo gig, using his allotted hour to give a somewhat chronological account of jazz selections dating back to Billy Strayhorn and proceeding up to his own composition from his latest recording, which will be released in the near future. Only two other composers intervened between Strayhorn and Simon himself: Thelonious Monk and Fred Hersch. Simon also interjected a free improvisation between Hersch’s selection and his own.

When working with the tunes of others, Simon has an engaging style of hinting at the tune through extended suggestions before “getting down to business.” As a result, anyone familiar with Strayhorn’s book would have registered the tune from Simon’s opening gesture; but he then kept the attentive listener waiting for the first “straight” statement of the tune. This reminds me of how, in both the first and fourth movements of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 68 (first) symphony in C minor, there is an elaborately prolonged introduction during which all of the themes of the exposition are first introduced. (I would be surprised if Simon himself had many thoughts about Brahms while playing Strayhorn!)

Monk was the only composer to be represented by two compositions, “Monk’s Mood” and “Monk’s Dream.” (Simon joked about Monk liking to include himself in his titles.) As with any good jazz pianist of interest, Simon knew how to weave his own reflections around Monk’s thematic material without ever trying to fall back on mirroring Monk’s own keyboard style. (Monk had his own idiosyncratic approach to piano technique. It was frequently provocative; and, when I saw him playing at the Village Vanguard, it could be downright scary.) Simon’s ordering of these two pieces was particularly effective, since “Monk’s Mood” comes across as a reflection on Duke Ellington, whose band presented the first performance of “Lush Life” during one of its Carnegie Hall concerts.

The Hersch selection came from his Songs Without Words album. Simon played the first of the set, entitled simply “Aria.” It is easy to identify the strong implication of a vocal line. Nevertheless, between the unconventional approaches to rhythm and the sophisticated approach to chord progressions,  that line would pose a significant challenge to even the most qualified of vocalists.

The richness of Hersch’s capacity for invention, however, provided just the right groundwork for attentive listening to Simon’s own compositions. Nevertheless, as is the case with Hersch, Simon’s original work tends to require more than one listening experience. As one begins to adjust to his linguistic nuts and bolts, one can then cultivate an appreciation for what he is capable of constructing.

The free improvisation that preceded Simon’s compositions was very much an invention unto itself. On the surface the piece amounted to a study in ostinato technique. This meant that Simon set for himself a major physical challenge, but he definitely knew how to manage his energy to sustain that driving ostinato over the course of the entire improvisation as any number of invented motifs came and went around the core of a repeated pitch.

Sergei Prokofiev had his own approach to invention based on ostinato in his Opus 11 toccata in D minor (which now seems to be part of Yuja Wang’s repertoire). Simon’s approach to free improvisation left one thinking of Prokofiev on steroids. Without trying to pit one composer against another, I have to say that Simon’s inventiveness registered in both the immediate present and on subsequent recollection, while Prokofiev’s toccata serves more as a flash in the pan.

Palmetto Anthologizes Decade of Hersch’s Trio

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

I first became aware of jazz pianist Fred Hersch back when I was writing for Examiner.com. When he visited San Francisco Performances (SFP) as part of his My Coma Dreams tour, I was intrigued by the way in which he had channeled his capacity for making music into an autobiographical account of a coma that had debilitated him entirely for two months in 2008. Once he regained consciousness, the path to his being able to play piano again was long and arduous; and his decision to collaborate with director Herschel Garfein on a staged account of his recovery was nothing short of totally chilling.

Unfortunately, while I was easily drawn into writing a preview for this event, I was unable to attend the San Francisco performance due to having made a previous commitment. Nevertheless, I was curious about just what sort of musician Hersch was. The good news was that SFP came through again, and Hersch was one of the artists called upon to celebrate SFP’s return to Herbst Theatre for the 2015–16 season. This turned out to be not only my first experience of Hersch but also my first exposure to the trio he had formed back in 2010 with John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums.

That trio turned out to play a significant role in the development of Hersch’s innovative approaches to jazz. That role was acknowledged this past October, when Palmetto Records released a box set titled simply The Fred Hersch Trio: 10 Years / 6 Discs. This is basically a packaging of the five recordings released since the trio made its first album:

1. Whirl (2010)
2. Alive at the Vanguard (2012)
3. Floating (2014)
4. Sunday Night at the Vanguard (2016)
5. Live in Europe (2018)

The total number of discs accounts for the fact that Alive at the Vanguard was a two-CD release. As the hyperlinks indicate, I have only written about the last two of those recordings; so this new box set gave me the incentive to catch up on the earlier recordings.

Hersch has been one of the better embodiments of my frustrations with “GRAMMY logic.” Last year Live in Europe made the cut for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, but it lost out to Wayne Shorter’s Emanon album. Mind you, Shorter’s album was impressive, amounting to a synthesis of music with a graphic novel; but, in the larger scheme of things, I am more inclined to straight-ahead jamming where the music itself is the only priority.

Hersch’s command of repertoire is extensive. One encounters his own compositions frequently, but he is equally imaginative in seeking out innovative improvisations on old standards that one would think are too stogy to hold up to that treatment. After all, “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise” was composed by Sigmund Romberg back in 1928, when “musicals” were still being called “operettas;” and it carries all of the vestiges of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which had been defunct for about a decade). Nevertheless, Hersch’s capacity for invention transcends all of those cobwebs, making for a thoroughly absorbing listening experience.

I also suspect that much of my admiration for Hersch reflects back on his admiration for Thelonious Monk. Ironically, I did not hear any Monk performed when the Hersch Trio visited SFP in 2016; and, for that matter, Monk’s presence on Whirl is never more than subtly implicit. However, Monk always has a place in the spotlight in the remaining albums and is given a solo encore in the final track of the Live in Europe album.

My only regret is that the length of my working queue prevented me from getting to this collection until the penultimate day of the year. As a result, I could not have a hand in getting it onto anyone’s Christmas shopping list. On the other hand anyone now trying to arrange some kind of exchange agreement over something purchased on Amazon would definitely be rewarded in selecting this box as an alternative for another gift!

Big Band Arrangements of Fred Hersch’s Music

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

This Friday Palmetto Records will release its latest album of jazz pianist Fred Hersch. Those who follow this site regularly will probably find that first sentence a familiar one. However, this new release is a significant departure from the usual combo and solo recordings that Hersch followers tend to associate with him. Instead these recordings were made in Studio A of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German broadcasting, WDR) in Cologne, where Hersch performed with the seventeen members of the WDR Big Band. The title of the album is Begin Again; and, as is almost always the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for placing pre-orders.

The album surveys nine of Hersch’s compositions in big band settings. The first eight tracks are arrangements by WDR Big Band conductor Vince Mendoza, and the final track is an arrangement by Hersch himself. The first track, which is the title track, is the only selection that has not been previously recorded.

However, even those who have internalized the performances of all of Hersch’s previous recordings are likely to be struck by the freshness and novelty of this one. The “Editorial Reviews” section on that Amazon Web page describes Mendoza’s arrangements as “Ellingtonian.” I would respectfully disagree in a manner that, I feel, calls attention to the significance of this release.

From the very opening of the very first track, I found myself thinking back on the meticulous approaches to innovation that I used to encounter in the work of Gil Evans. Evans had a scrupulous talent more making sure that every instrument made its own distinctive contribution to overall sonority, a talent that he may (or may not) have picked up from studying the scores of Maurice Ravel. Mendoza struck me as the first arranger to pick up Evans’ torch and run with it in new directions, leading to the “brilliantly coloristic” sonorities cited on the Amazon Web page.

Equally significant is how each of these arrangements provides just the right framework for not only Hersch’s tunes but also the capacity for improvising around those tunes. Hersch is the only soloist on only three of the tracks, “Out Someplace,” a poignant blues recollection of the death of Matthew Shepard, “Pastorale,” and “The Orb,” one of the movements from My Coma Years, Hersch’s bold attempt to capture his thoughts on his own two-month-long coma. (“The Orb” is the selection arranged by Hersch himself.) The remaining tracks all feature solos by WDR Big Band members; and Hersch joins in on only two of those tracks, the title track and “Havana.”

Just as my classical preferences tend to tilt in the direction of chamber music, in jazz I have a similar bias towards the intimacy of the small combo; but the arrangements on Begin Again are so absorbing that it now counts as a significant exception to my normative rule!

61st GRAMMY Awards Less Satisfying that 60th

Last year, when I reviewed the winners of the 60th annual GRAMMY awards, I found only one point of agreement between my preferences and those of the GRAMMY judges. This year at least there were two albums about which I had good thoughts that turned out to be winners; but in both cases I thought that there were better albums in the category. Let me be more specific.

The Best Jazz Instrumental Album went to Wayne Shorter’s Emanon album. This was, indeed, an impressive undertaking; but it was impressive because the jazz was only one component of a far richer structure that, on the musical side, included the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and, on the packaging side, included a graphic novel inspired by the music. Much as I like Emanon, I felt that the award should have gone to an album of “jazz for its own sake;” and my preference among the nominees was the Live in Europe album of the Fred Hersch Trio.

courtesy of Naxos of America

On the other hand, when it came to Best Opera Recording, things got a bit more delicate. Those who follow this site know that my reaction to Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs was mixed, concluding with my deciding to allow the jury to continue to debate until I had the opportunity to see the opera in performance. In other words the recording did not go very far in encouraging my interest in the opera itself. By way of contrast, while I have a habit of turning away from yet another recording of an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, I have to say that the Rigoletto nominee was more deserving of the award, particularly for the stunning performance of Nadine Sierra in the role of Gilda. If anyone deserved credit for the Jobs opera, it was Elizabeth Ostrow for producing the album on the basis of live recordings made during the Santa Fe performances.