Monday, March 15, 2021

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.

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