Polyphonic equations
PIANIST FRED HERSCH ON MUSICAL SYMMETRY
Pianist Fred Hersch on musical symmetry
You have to go back to pianist and composer Fred Hersch’s days in his hometown of Cincinnati to discover his long history of playing in duos. There, after a short stint away at college, he teamed with local guitarist Kenny Poole, a “sensitive musician who ... never overplayed,” as Hersch explains in his 2017 memoir Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz (Crown Archetype). “He could play a bossa nova and sound just like João Gilberto,” he writes, crediting Poole for his ongoing love of Brazilian music. The duo is just one of the various formats — solo, trio, and pocket quartet — he performs in, not to mention his longer chamber projects. But it provides the best entry to understanding Hersch’s approach to music and its evolution.
Audible proof of this can be heard when he appears Thursday, May 31, at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in duos with the clarinetist Anat Cohen and the vocalist Kate McGarry. Hersch will have just finished marking the 11th year of his invitational “And Friends” duo performance series at New York’s Jazz Standard club (Hersch’s Pocket Orchestra with trumpet and percussion also took a weekend). In addition to nights with Cohen and McGarry, the lineup at the Jazz Standard included dates with saxophonist Miguel Zenon and bassist-vocalist Esperanza Spalding. Hersch estimated that he’s had 40- some musicians at his yearly event, including singer Nancy King, saxophonist Chris Potter, and guitarist Julian Lage. “[Working in a duo] is like dating,” he said. “A lot of times, first dates go no further than the first date. I might have been intrigued to play with different musicians, and it might be interesting to play two sets together, but then when it was over, I don’t need to do it again. At least I satisfied my curiosity. With some musicians, like Kate, Julian, and Anat, you want to maintain an ongoing relationship.”
Most of Hersch’s recognition, including various Grammy nominations, has come from his solo and trio work (his new trio recording, Live In Europe, was released earlier this month on the Palmetto label). But the memoir makes clear just how important duos have been to his musical development. He describes the practice rooms at the NEC’s Jordan Hall and how, because of a dearth of worthy rhythm section students with which to form trios and quartets, he would grab exceptional students to join him in practice. Among them were musicians who went on to become notable figures in the jazz world, including saxophonists Michael Moore and Marty Ehrlich, the bassist-guitarist Jerome Harris, and fellow pianist Anthony Coleman. “The duo suited my ability to use the entire keyboard to do multiple things at once,” he writes. “It also let me orchestrate the music instead of just playing block chords with the left hand. I learned to play using the piano more like a drum set, having multiple pitches.” In addition to indulging his sense of melodic counterpoint, it allows him to range over extreme volumes, soft and loud. It’s also about relationships, he writes. “It’s collaborative and also intimate — two musicians, close together. Nothing more. You have to be compatible but also different enough for each musician to offer something unique. You inspire each other and interact in the deepest musical way. It’s almost sex.”
Hersch’s memoir is something more than the usual ladder-of-success music bio. It’s the story of parallel identity quests, one as a musician, one as a gay man. It also captures a period, first in Boston, then in New York City, when jazz and gay identity were evolving, and not always in harmony. And it’s a sad reminder of the first years of the AIDS crisis at a time when a particularly virulent form of homophobia was on display, and hope for those that suffered seemed distant. The book also captures the Greenwich Village scene of the day, with its jazz clubs and street action. “What got me wanting to write a memoir was reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids,” said Hersch. “It was like a valentine
“[A duo is] collaborative but also intimate — two musicians, close together. Nothing more. You have to be compatible but also different enough for each musician to offer something unique.” — Fred Hersch
to New York in the ’ 70s. Even if you’d never heard a Patti Smith album, it wasn’t necessary to understand her story. That’s what I wanted. You could read my book and not be a jazz nerd or cognoscenti and still get something out of it. It was fun to describe, not just for the general audience but for young musicians, what it was like to be a young player in the ’ 70s before jazz was institutionalized, when you could rub elbows at the bar with some of the greatest names in jazz.”
The deeper story is that of one of the first jazz figures to publicly recognize his homosexuality and later to announce he was HIV-positive. He deals frankly with health issues and his survival, including his lapse into a two-month-long coma in 2007. “I didn’t want to sensationalize anything. I handled the disturbing and difficult things by taking them straight on. I couldn’t put in everything. But even now there’s one story I wish I wouldn’t have put in. I’ll think about these things for the rest of my life.”
The book is also rich with musical opinion and insights into musicians. Hersch is fascinated by Duke Ellington’s “programmatic, almost visual approach to structure and voicing.” He describes Thelonious Monk, a composer he almost always includes in performances, as “a brilliantly offbeat, cryptically fascinating person with a profoundly unconventional approach to the piano ... one of the all-time greatest composers of shortform jazz pieces.” Jazz nerds will be encouraged to know that Hersh’s section on Monk is more than a hat tip. He discusses in detail what makes the music of Monk’s “Evidence” unique and enjoyable, the “almost twelvetone row in the A section,” and the B section’s “displaced chromatic scale that ascends in half-steps on offbeats ... .” Hersch doesn’t see a difference between composing new music and writing new arrangements of music from someone like Monk. “I believe that interpreting someone else’s music is not less creative than writing something original,” he said. “I seem to have a thing with Monk. Finding a way to interpret a piece of his music and be true to yourself takes some thorough head-scratching. It doesn’t have to be original to be creative. The arrangement is creative, the soloing is creative.”
In his book, Hersch credits composing for helping to reconcile his two selves, “the gay Fred and the jazz- cat Fred.” “I wrote music as a child,” he said, “but then I stopped. I was intimidated to write jazz tunes because I knew so many great ones.” But he was encouraged by trumpeter Art Farmer, with whom he played beginning in the late ’ 70s, and before long, he was modeling original jazz tunes on forms he discovered studying the compositions of Charles Mingus and Ellington composer Billy Strayhorn. Additionally, he writes, “I was writing, to some degree, from my heart and from personal experience.” Since then, Hersch has written long-form pieces, including “Leaves of Grass,” a project that explores Walt Whitman’s poetry cycle, written for jazz chamber group and two vocalists. Experience provided the inspiration for “My Coma Dreams,” an ambitious piece of music for 10 musicians derived from the visions he had during the two months he spent behind closed eyes.
McGarry was one of the vocalists on the 2004 recording of “Leaves of Grass” (the other was Kurt Elling), and one of the very few with which Hersch continues to work. “I don’t play anymore with singers,” said the pianist, who in the past teamed with Chris Connor, Janis Siegel, Jay Clayton, and Dawn Upshaw. “Kate has the spontaneity that duos require. We’ve done some nice things together over the years. And she continues to evolve.” Clarinetist Cohen, he said, is like bassist Spalding: “Two young female musicians worthy of the hype.” The sonic blend of their instruments yields different tones, as heard on Anat Cohen, Fred
Hersch Live in Healdsburg (Anzic Records), released earlier this year. “I get a particular sound, my sound, from the piano,” Hersch said. “But put me with another instrument, like clarinet, with its different colors, the combined sound is unique.”