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.
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