By Claire Dietz
Fred Hersch is no ordinary jazz musician. In fact, he is far from it. He is best known not only for his prolific jazz career but also for being one of the first publicly out jazz musicians.
Hersch is also prolific for another reason. In 2008, he developed HIV-induced dementia. As a result, he fell into a coma for two months, only to wake up with such severe muscular atrophy he could no longer play the piano. But that didn’t stop him. After arduous rehab, Hersch has made a complete recovery.
Now, he will perform at Hancher alongside his trio on Friday and Saturday.
David Hajdu of the New York Times described Hersch’s body of work as, “a manifesto of contemporary jazz.” This can be seen through his numerous nominations as well as his albums, which have gained glowing reviews throughout his career.
However, Hersch is not limited to just his piano.
After awakening from his coma and making a full recovery, Hersch composed something to commemorate this era in his life, a multimedia production aptly titled My Coma Dreams, which revolves his experiences and dreams he remembered shortly after awakening from his coma.
Jazz Times, in a 2014 article reviewing the DVD release of the production, said it “is based on eight dreams remembered by Hersch when he emerged from his two-month coma in 2008. The presentation features animation by Sarah Wickliffe and computer imagery generated by Eamonn Farrell.”
“The 11-piece instrumental ensemble includes such jazz musicians as drummer John Hollenbeck, bassist John Hébert, trumpeter Ralph Alessi and reed player Adam Kolker, along with a string quartet featuring violinist/violist Joyce Hammann and cellist Dave Eggar.”
Hersch is no stranger to the Midwest, or Iowa, for that matter. He was born in Cincinnati but attended Grinnell College for a semester before dropping out to continue his jazz career. Hersch now holds an honorary doctorate from the school.
When speaking to Hersch, he had just returned from South Korea; however, his intention was not to perform as much as it was to create a new album.
Hersch had played in South Korea and had fallen in love, in a sense, with the environment. Everything from the music hall to the piano to the sound engineer. So much so he actually went back to the exact hall with the intention of recreating the environment as he recorded his newest album.
Along with releasing the album this summer, Hersch will also release a memoir in the early fall. However, that isn’t what brings him to Hancher. Instead, he is here to play with a trio, known as, aptly, the Fred Hersch Trio.
“I love this band,” Hersch said. “It allows me to play any material, anything further on the left or right, very elegant, precise things … We are a band, not a pickup group. We don’t read a whole lot of music; it’s a pretty remarkable little machine.”
Nate Chinen, in his review of the trio’s album Floating, found it full of “diversity of mood and color in these songs — and they do pass muster as songs, with strong melody and sensible design — is a boon to Mr. Hersch and his partners, who keep finding new routes of expression within the music. Mr. Hersch, with his fluent exposition, his rapturous clarity and his elegant assurance of touch, leads the way.”
