Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch, solo piano

March 4, 2009
8:30 p.m.
Wednesday
Bucknell Hall – Free

FRED HERSCH was called “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. As a sideman to jazz legends including Joe Henderson, Art Farmer, and Stan Getz in the late 70s, he solidified a reputation as a versatile master of jazz piano, as well as a relentlessly probing composer and conceptualist.Widely recognized for his unique body of original works as well as his reinvention of the standard jazz repertoire, he is known for keen insight, fresh ideas, and extraordinary technique.

His 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 twodozen albums as bandleader and solo pianist.

In 2003, Fred Hersch created Leaves of Grass (Palmetto Records), a large-scale setting of WaltWhitman’s poetry for two voices (Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry) and an instrumental octet. The work was presented in 2005 at a soldout performance at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as part of a six-city U.S. tour. Hersch has toured with concert pianist Christopher O’Riley (Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos) and has collaborated with artists ranging from Bill Frisell, Toots Thielemans, and Charlie Haden to singers Renée Fleming, NormaWinstone, and Audra McDonald. He has received commissions from the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, Doris Duke Foundation,Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Gramercy Trio, and 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.

In 2006, Palmetto Records released the solo disc Fred Hersch in Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis. Its release led to him 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. He leads a trio and 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 and at numerous concerts for the charities Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

He 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, NEA and Meet the Composer grants, and six composition residencies at the MacDowell Colony. He conducted a Professional TrainingWorkshop for Young Musicians at TheWeill Institute at Carnegie Hall in 2008 and was awarded the Branigan Lectureship at Indiana University in 2004. A committed educator, Hersch was a faculty member at the New England Conservatory for ten years and has taught at The New School and Manhattan School of Music. He is currently a visiting professor atWestern Michigan University. www.fredhersch.com