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Fred Hersch: Making more out of less
In this episode, pianist, composer, educator and recording artist Fred Hersch tells how the scene has changed over the years ("people drink less now"), learning to be gracious ("the audience needs to have their experience independent of how you feel about it"), education ("You can spend $200,000 on a jazz performance degree and not make that much money in the next 10 years"), songwriting ("I try to write tunes"), self reflection (""If I want to be the person I can ...
read moreFred Hersch & the WDR Big Band: Begin Again
Pianist Fred Hersch, who needs no introduction to most well-informed jazz enthusiasts, is by and large known as a leader of trios and other small groups. Begin Again displays another side of Hersch's appreciable talents: nine of his handsome compositions, astutely recast by six-time Grammy Award winner Vince Mendoza and impressively performed by Germany's superb WDR Big Band. The diaphanous title song, which opens the album, is the only composition not previously recorded by Hersch. Any lingering ...
read moreDorothy & George Jacob: Putting Bray On The Jazz Map
Twenty years is old for a car and really old for a dog, but in jazz festival terms twenty years is perhaps not so long in the tooth. For a jazz festival twenty years means established, with the major storms of the early years weathered, a brand that people recognize and a heap of good will from the local community. Bray Jazz Festival (view 2019 events), having come through a few tempestuous patches and made a good many ...
read moreFred Hersch Trio: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard
Pianist Fred Hersch has produced a steady stream of recordings in the last few years, both solo and with his current trio. The trio was featured on Live In Europe (Palmetto Records, 2018) and Sunday Night At The Vanguard (Palmetto Records, 2016). This album captures a special career moment for Hersch: his first appearance as leader at the venerable Village Vanguard, arguably the most storied jazz club in the history of the music. At the time his working ...
read moreFred Hersch: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard
Pianist Fred Hersch's discography has been both broadening and deepening in recent years. Besides solo and group recordings, he has released collaborations such as Live in Healdsburg (Anzic, 2018), with multi-instrumentalist Anat Cohen. In addition, the archiving of his past work has borne fruit in the form of a remastered Heartsongs (Sunnyside, 2018) and now Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard. The latter is a corollary to the former, recorded in concert with a different lineup ...
read more3x3: Piano Trios, vol. III
More evidence that three is truly a magic number, as explorations in this format remain as expansive and inventive as ever... Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ the Village Vanguard Palmetto Records 2018 Fine artists can aspire to appear in the Louvre someday. Comics might hope for a Las Vegas residency or a hosting spot on Saturday Night Live. The similar goal for quirky chefs might be a couple minutes of reality-show fame and ...
read moreFred Hersch Trio '97: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard
Pianist Fred Hersch paid some dues at the Village Vanguard, sitting in as a sideman there from 1979 on, playing with the bands of saxophonist Joe Henderson, trumpeter Art Farmer, alto sax man Lee Konitz, and bassist Ron Carter. But he waited until 1997 to make his debut as a leader. That debut was captured on tape, and surfaces now, years later, with the Fred Hersch Trio '97's @ The Village Vanguard.Hersch's subsequent history as a leader at ...
read moreFred Hersch Trio: Live In Europe
For the past few years, pianist Fred Hersch has been releasing CDs with a regularity that would make them feel routine if the music wasn't always so good. This new one is another live effort featuring his long standing trio with John Hebert and Eric McPherson, this time recorded in Brussels. As usual, it's excellent. This time around there are two selections each by Wayne Shorter and Thelonious Monk but the balance of the compositions played are Hersch ...
read moreThe Rarest of Ivories: Fred Hersch, Joey Alexander, Eliane Elias and Renee Rosnes
One of jazz music's most durable and venerated instrumental formats, the piano-led ensemble, trio and otherwise, has proven flexible beyond its surface simplicity, particularly in the hands of ingenious musicians like Fred Hersch, Joey Alexander, Eliane Elias and Renee Rosnes. Such composers/players, along with their esteemed accompanists, have optimal opportunity to bring their intrinsic creativity to flower in utilizing the sparse lineup and, in so doing, further bond with their bandmates. The musicians also continue to hone their collective and ...
read moreFred Hersch: Live In Europe
Fred Hersch has been a fixture on the New York jazz scene since the 1970s. By now a legendary international figure, Hersch has over the years compiled a powerful and diverse discography that includes everything from jazz standards to original compositions, a mostly solo album of the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, an original composition, Leaves of Grass, based on the poetry of Walt Whitman, a recording of his own American classical pieces, a free form solo performance at the ...
read moreFred Hersch Trio: Live In Europe
Fred Hersch's 2009 recording, Whirl (Palmetto Records), was where pure magic first occurred in the pianist's extensive and consistently superb discography. That particular outing introduced his now long-standing trio with bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson. Alive At the Vanguard (2012), Floating (2014), and Sunday Night At The Vanguard (2016) by the group followed, all on Palmetto Records. For those who lauded Hersch's solo outing, Open Book (Palmetto Records, 2017) as his finest, most incisive and finely-focused ...
read moreLet Me Forget
"Let Me Forget" is from the album Lisipi and the video was taken from a live concert at the Bflat jazz club in Cagliari, Italy on January 17, 2019. The Rome-based trio consists of Liliya Akhmetzyanova on piano, Silvio Canargiu on bass, and Pierpaolo Frailis on drums.
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