Jazz Articles about Fred Hersch

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Fred Hersch Talks About His Found Duo Album With ‘The Guitar Whisperer'

by Frank Housh
July 5, 2026

Mick Goodrick (1945-2022) is a legend among jazz guitarists as a teacher, author, and mentor to John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and many more. Known as “Mr. Goodchord," Goodrick was a leading theorist in voice leading for guitar and his 1987 book The Advancing Guitarist has been a fundamental text for a generation. It eschews exercises and method in favor of essays that create a conceptual system of the instrument. He could have had a busy performing career, but instead decided to write ...

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Mick Goodrick & Fred Hersch: Feebles, Fables And Ferns

by Jack Kenny
June 22, 2026

Recorded in Fred Hersch's New York studio in August 1988, Feebles, Fables and Ferns captures a rare, one-time meeting between two luminaries who were both active in Boston at the time. That it has taken nearly four decades to reach the public is a question the music itself seems to answer: this is not the kind of recording that announces itself. It simply waits, patient and self-possessed. Notorious for shunning the limelight,Mick Goodrick--spent the bulk of his career as a ...

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Mick Goodrick & Fred Hersch: Feebles, Fables And Ferns

by Neil Duggan
June 5, 2026

Feebles, Fables and Ferns captures a rare duo session between guitarist Mick Goodrick and pianist Fred Hersch. Recorded in August 1988 at Hersch's studio in New York, the album provides an intimate display of the superbly matched improvisational skills of two musicians in full flight. During his career, Goodrick perfected the art of avoiding the spotlight, even when collaborating with artists such as John Surman, Charlie Haden and Gary Burton. He was not prolific as a composer or ...

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Fred Hersch: The Touch of Genius

by Ken Dryden
April 17, 2026

The sound of Fred Hersch at the piano is so distinctive, a couple of bars is usually enough to identify him. The mainly self-taught Cincinnati native excelled early, playing jazz in his home town before leaving to study with pianist Jaki Byard at the New England Conservatory of Music. From there, Fred moved to New York City, immersing himself by attending live performances and getting invitations to play with still living greats who were willing to give the young man ...

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Fred Hersch Trio at Smoke

by Paul Reynolds
March 19, 2026

Fred Hersch Trio Smoke Jazz Club New York, NY March 13, 2026 Pianist Fred Hersch is making a welcome return to trio work after years in which he all but put aside one of his most favored formats. After recording a half-dozen trio albums in the 2010s, Hersch took a break until The Surrounding Green (ECM Records, 2025), his first new trio recording in seven years, which featured Drew Gress and Joey Baron--both long-time partners of the pianist. ...

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Contaminazioni Contemporanee 2025

by Luciano Rossetti
November 6, 2025

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Improvisation Versus Composition

by Robert J. Lewis
August 11, 2025

What is it that attracts music lovers to jazz (improvised music)? Is it the loose structure, or the beat or the notes and melodies we have never heard before and will never hear again, unless the performance has been recorded? Or is it the musician's uncanny ability to spontaneously translate feelings that inform the notes into the language of music? Perhaps it is the musician's audacity and courage --daring to play without a script; to make it up as he ...