Jazz Studies
Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been called a "one of the small handful of brilliant musicians of his generation" by Down Beat, and has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. From the late 1970s 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. 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 has ongoing special collaborations with jazz and classical instrumentalists and vocalists around the world, from Bill Frisell, Toots Thielemans, and Charlie Haden, to pianist Christopher O'Riley '81 A.D. and singers Renée Fleming, Norma Winstone, and Audra McDonald. His newest project features an unconventional line-up of piano, Ralph Alessi, trumpet, Jo Lawry, voice, and Richie Barshay '05, percussion. That project's latest CD, The Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra: Live at Jazz Standard, was released in April 2009 on Sunnyside Records.
Hersch has appeared on more than one hundred recordings total, including more than two dozen albums as bandleader/solo pianist. In 1999, Nonesuch Records released Let Yourself Go: Fred Hersch at Jordan Hall, one of the rare jazz CDs recorded in NEC's majestic hall. Hersch's solo piano compositions and chamber music are published by Edition Peters.
Hersch has 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. Hersch's numerous accomplishments also include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, and two Grammy nominations, for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance (1993) and Best Instrumental Composition (1995).
Hersch has acted as a passionate spokesman and fundraiser for AIDS services and education agencies since 1993. He has produced and performed on 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 previously taught at NEC, beginning in the 1980s. He received NEC's Outstanding Alumni Award in 1990.
Bachelor of Music, with honors, New England Conservatory. Former faculty of The New School and Manhattan School of Music. Visiting professor, Western Michigan University. Recordings on Naxos, Palmetto, Sunnyside, Nonesuch, Varese Sarabande, Arabesque Jazz, and Sony Classical.
Photo by Andrew Hurlbut
Related links:
Listen to a NPR interview with Fred Hersch
Read an allaboutjazz interview with Fred Hersch
2009-08-20
FELIX MENDELSSOHN