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.
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