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.”