release date: 06.01.2023 on Palmetto Records
Pianist/composer Fred Hersch and vocalist/bassist/songwriter esperanza spalding (stylized in all lower case) celebrate their captivating new album Alive at the Village Vanguard (available January 6, 2023, Palmetto Records) with a 20-date national tour Sunday, January 8 through Sunday, February 5. Due out January 6, 2023 via Palmetto Records, Alive at the Village Vanguard
release date: 07.01.2022 via Paletto Records
“[Fred Hersch is] a pianist, composer and conceptualist of rare imaginative power.” – Nate Chinen, The New York Times
“Hersch’s work has developed an intensity of intelligence and emotional directness unparalleled among his peers.” – Steve Futterman, The New Yorker
Iconic pianist/composer Fred Hersch was an early adopter of new technologies and new ways forward when the pandemic hit in early 2020. But he’s also been among the most eager to return to live performance and collaboration now that life has begun to resume some semblance of normality. In August he returned to the studio to record one of his most ambitious projects to date: Breath By Breath, his first album ever pairing jazz rhythm section with string quartet.
Fred Hersch: Refuge, due out January 7, 2022 via Palmetto Records, features Hersch with Drew Gress, Jochen Rueckert & The Hudson String Quartet
“Fred Hersch belongs to the jazz piano aristocracy, that small elite called to leave a lasting mark.” – Louis-Julien Nicolaou, Télérama, June 2021
“Fred Hersch is always on target. Right in the heart. By playing ‘Songs from Home.’ Fred Hersch makes Bal Blomet his home. The audience’s silence is worthy of that of the forest that surrounds the house where this album was recorded…. Fred Hersch makes the piano sing…. The public does not want to leave. Fred Hersch either.” – Guillaume Lagrée, Le jars jase jazz, June 2021
release date: 06.11.2020 via Palmetto Records
“Ever since I heard Fred Hersch for the first time, he not only became a dear friend but a true idol. His piano playing, his music making, his breath, style, sound and soul are absolutely unique. He sets music free. He speaks directly to all of our hearts. A true Mensch at work. Fred Hersch is a gift to all of us and Songs From Home is another proof of this simple and yet essential truth.”
– Igor Levit, celebrated concert pianist
“When it comes to the art of solo piano in jazz, there are currently two classes of performers: Fred Hersch and everybody else.” – Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz
On Songs From Home, Hersch explores nostalgic pop songs, heartfelt originals and resonant jazz classics with his inimitable expressiveness and rich invention in the intimacy of imposed isolation
Available May 15, 2020 via BlueLand Records
“Tonal nuance, melodic sense and instrumental command that set him apart from his peers.” – Ed Enright, DownBeat
For Now has a lot to say about romance, and it says it with quiet conviction and passionate declaration. Ace multi-reedist and composer Brian Landrus whose groundbreaking 2017 large-ensemble album Generations “takes the jazz big band tradition into the mesosphere” (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), turns here to inner pathways, bringing together a remarkable quartet: pianist Fred Hersch bassist Drew Gress and drummer Billy Hart. Rounding out the musical equation are the brilliant young players Michael Rodriguez (trumpet) and Sara Caswell (violin), plus inventive and elegant string quartet arrangements by Landrus and the distinguished opera composer Robert Aldridge featuring Caswell and Joyce Hamman (violin), Lois Martin (viola) and Jody Redhage-Ferber (cello). The album is produced by Aldridge and composer/writer Herschel Garfein, both Grammy winners.
Available: October 18 via Palmetto Records
One of the most influential improvising musicians currently performing—a “living legend,” per the New Yorker—the pianist and composer Fred Hersch has made groundbreaking contributions in a staggering range of creative formats. DownBeat called his unprecedented cross-disciplinary theatre piece My Coma Dreams “a brave work of art that deserves to be seen and heard.” In the New York Times, the critic Nate Chinen wrote that “solo piano playing is one of the things that Mr. Hersch does best,” before explaining how he “combines the rigours of classical training with the disciplined freedom of improvisation and explores a richly varied repertory.”
release date: 07.06.2019
Acclaimed Pianist Fred Hersch to Release Career-Spanning Album with WDR Big Band, Arranged & Conducted by Vince Mendoza
