pianist Fred Hersch

FRED HERSCH INTERVIEW
In the Spring edition of the Jazz In Europe Magazine we have a feature on pianist Fred Hersch. You can read the abridged version on the Website here: https://t.co/k0lrHnIJQx pic.twitter.com/ZlLkqpWF6v

— Jazz In Europe (@Jazzineu) March 14, 2019

pianist / composer Fred Hersch

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to collaborate and perform in duos with the amazing pianist/composer Fred Hersch. Last year we were very happy that one of our performances was documented and now, I’m happy to announce, that live duo recording - Live In Healdsburg - will be coming out on March 9th!

You can catch Fred and me on the road next month and the Tentet will be out and about this spring. Click the links below for show and ticket info:  

FRED HERSCH AND ANAT COHEN DUO DATES
Mar 14 / Davis, CA / Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Mar 15 / Davis, CA / Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Mar 16 / Davis, CA / Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Mar 17 / Davis, CA / Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Mar 18 / Boise, ID / Boise State University
Mar 20 / Seattle, WA / Dimitriou's Jazz Alley
Mar 21 / Seattle, WA / Dimitriou's Jazz Alley

TENTET DATES
Mar 10 / Cambridge, MA / Sanders Theatre (co-bill with Ben Wendel Seasons Band)
Apr 07 / Kansas City, MO / American Jazz Museum 
Apr 08 / Columbia, MO / Missouri Theatre
Apr 10 / Lebanon, IL / Hettenhausen Center for the Arts
Apr 11 / Dayton, OH / Sears Recital Hall
May 05 / Washington, DC / Kennedy Center -Terrace Theater

from: https://mailchi.mp/anatcohen/new-album-duo-dates-1271617?e=db0f2c0856

Fred Hersch

Excellent conversation with pianist-composer Fred Hersch, from Stereophile. Look out for a Before & After... https://t.co/ess0871Ioi

— JazzTimes Magazine (@JazzTimes) July 19, 2016

Benoit Delbecq & Fred Hersch Double Trio's "Fun House" and Chris Clark's Debut "Cedar Wisely"

SOURCE: GOMEDIA PR, Published: 2013-02-03

Songlines will release a pair of extremely diverse yet equally exciting albums on March 12. Fun House, the first recorded collaboration between the critically acclaimed pianists Benoit Delbecqand Fred Hersch, finds them performing in a rare double-trio configuration. It's a ground-breaking encounter and between jazz piano and the sonic resources of contemporary classical music, between American tradition and the European avant-garde.

Hersch's quest for absolute beauty and impeccable virtuosity have become legendary. Delbecq is one of Europe's most prominent jazz keyboardists; his compositions and elegant, complex improvisations build on John Cage's prepared piano techniques. Add to this Steve Argüelles' stealth “assistance and obstacles" live sampling, and three of the most celebrated rhythm section players of today (Jean-Jacques Avenel and Mark Helias on bass, and Steve Argüelles and Gerry Hemingway on drums), and the result is a multi-faceted collaboration, with opportunities for various combinations of duos and trios as well as full-group interaction. The music has its moments of abstraction, its moonlit soundscapes such as “One is Several," but it also embraces a jazzier aesthetic, for example on the Monkisyh/Lacyish “Night for Day."

The project was sparked in 2008 when Hersch came to a New York gig that Delbecq was playing with the John Hébert Trio. They had only met once before, but had been digging each other's playing on record. “The first time I listened to Pursuit I was completely mesmerized," says Hersch. “It is an amazing project and showed me that Benoit is a completely unique pianist, composer and conceptualist. I suggested we do something with two pianos, not realizing that he already had a duo project with Andy Milne (Where is Panonica?). So we thought, 'What would be novel and bit outrageous?"

Delbecq came up with the idea of double trio including his longtime collaborators Avenel and Argüelles, and Hersch had a long history with Helias and Hemingway. Delbecq notes, “the personnel came very naturally. Everybody knew each other already. I had worked with Mark for the Phonetics project and had met and played with Gerry several times. The first minutes of the first rehearsal I remember very precisely, they just showed we'd made a great choice! The music found its flow and its freedom from the very beginning."
Read more: http://news.allaboutjazz.com/news.php?id=102490#.URfyu6XhEhR

Pianist Fred Hersch Survives Coma to Write a New Chapter to His Jazz Career

By Tad Hendrickson
Even though it was Sunday, the Village Vanguard was packed to catch the last night of pianist Fred Hersch's weeklong run. Hersch had played the legendary club in New York's West Village before, even releasing a live album recorded there, and the room had the energy of an artist restaking his claim as one of current jazz's most important figures. He's released more than 30 albums as a leader and has played sideman to such legends as Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Art Farmer and Toots Theilmans since coming to New York in 1977.

Hersch has also won countless awards over the years and has even been influential as a teacher, having worked with many of today's younger artists. His own rich body of work includes a broad array of ensembles, but one thing that never changes is his rich, beautiful tone and ability to craft original melodies or thoughtfully recasting those written by others.
Complete on > http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=59240

Fred Hersch - Brigas Nunca Mais

Album: Fred Hersch Plays Jobim   //   Song: Brigas Nunca Mais

Fred Hersch's gifts are considerable, whether he's interpreting Monk, Richard Rodgers, Ornette Coleman or, yes, even Fred Hersch. He always finds the challenging and the beautiful in his source material. His latest exploration is all Jobim, and with the exception of one track with percussionist Jamey Haddad, it's a solo flight of the highest order. He takes to the skies, sometimes in a romantic tradition, but most often in layered, polyrhythmic workouts.

Both modus operandi remind us why he's a piano player's piano player. Hersch re-harmonizes, syncopates and makes deft choices for his improvs in these Brazilian songs -- whether the commensurate Desafinado, Insensatez and Corcovado, or my favorite, "Brigas Nunca Mais." This record is my top 2009 pick because Hersch reminds me why I started paying attention to him 15 years ago on a collection of Johnny Mandel tunes; his portraiture is not mere recitation, but rather intimate, memorable and masterful works of art adapted from another master's works of art. --Walter Ray Watson, NPR Senior Producer

Fred Hersch....

Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been called a "one of the small handful of brilliant musicians of his generation" by Downbeat and has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. From the late 70's onward as a sideman to jazz legends including Joe Henderson, Art Farmer and Stan Getz, he has solidified a reputation as a versatile master of jazz piano, as well as a relentlessly probing composer and conceptualist. He is widely recognized for his ability to steadfastly create a unique body of original works while reinventing the standard jazz repertoire – investing time-tested classics with keen insight, fresh ideas and extraordinary technique. Whether unaccompanied, in duo, working with trios and quintets, Hersch has explored the jazz tradition to its fullest even as he opens new and undiscovered doors. Hersch's numerous accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, two Grammy® nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance and a Grammy® nomination for Best Instrumental Composition. He has appeared on over one hundred recordings, including more than two-dozen albums as bandleader/solo pianist.

His career as a performer has been greatly enhanced by his composing activities, a vital part of nearly all of his live concerts and recordings. In 2003, Hersch created Leaves of Grass (Palmetto Records), a large-scale setting of Walt Whitman's poetry for two voices (Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry) and an instrumental octet; the work was presented in March 2005 in a sold-out performance at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall as part of a six-city US tour. Hersch has toured with concert pianist Christopher O'Riley ("Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos") and he has also collaborated with artists ranging from Bill Frisell, Toots Thielemans and Charlie Haden to singers Renée Fleming, Norma Winstone and Audra McDonald. He has received commissions from The Gilmore Keyboard Festival, The Doris Duke Foundation, The Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The Gramercy Trio and The Brooklyn Youth Chorus. His solo piano compositions and chamber music are published by Edition Peters. Naxos Records has released Fred Hersch: Concert Music 2001-2006, a disc of his through-composed "classical" works.

Hersch is considered to be the most prolific and widely-praised solo jazz pianist of his generation. In 2006, Palmetto Records released the solo disc Fred Hersch in Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis; its release led to Hersch becoming the first pianist in the 70-year history of New York's legendary Village Vanguard to play an entire week as a solo pianist shortly after the disc's release. In addition, he leads a trio, a quintet and has ongoing special collaborations with jazz and classical instrumentalists and vocalists around the world. His newest project features an unconventional line-up of piano, trumpet, voice and percussion; The Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra: Live at Jazz Standard will be released in April 2009 on Sunnyside Records.

Hersch has acted as a passionate spokesman and fund-raiser for AIDS services and education agencies since 1993. He has produced and performed on four benefit recordings four benefit recordings and at numerous concerts for the charities Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS that have raised over $250,000 to date.

Hersch has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning with Dr. Billy Taylor and on a wide variety of National Public Radio programs including Fresh Air, Jazz Set, Studio 360 and Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. Hersch has also been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer, and six composition residencies at The MacDowell Colony. He conducted a Professional Training Workshop for Young Musicians at The Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall in 2008 and was awarded the Branigan Lectureship at Indiana University in 2004. A committed educator, has taught at The New School and Manhattan School of Music; he is currently a visiting professor at Western Michigan University and is on the Jazz Studies faculty of The New England Conservatory.
"Few jazz pianists have ever struck as beguiling a balance between technique, feeling, insight and imagination..."
Jazziz

"Hersch's work has developed an intensity of intelligence and emotional directness unparalleled among his peers."
Steve Futterman, The New Yorker

"...a modern master."
Ted Panken, Downbeat

"A pristine pianist with a poet's soul - a pair of qualities that combine to especially dazzling effect."
Joan Anderman, The Boston Globe

"Mr. Hersch has developed a solo concept second to none in jazz."
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
Photos: Matthew Sussman, Jimmy Katz
http://www.fredhersch.com/bio.html

Fred Hersch - So in Love (Chivas Jazz Festival / SP, 2002)

Directv Music Hall - SP/Brasil (2002)
Piano (solo): Fred Hersch;
Projeto / Produção: LPC Projetos Culturais;
Direção Artística: Toy Lima;
Gravação: TV Cultura de São Paulo.