An emotional journey

Fred Hersch Trio delivers great opening blast to Winter Jazzfest

For someone whose life has at times been very hard, Fred Hersch made playing beautiful music look easy.

The 57-year-old U.S. jazz pianist sat at the grand piano at Dominion- Chalmers United Church on Thursday night. His hands moved. Marvels of improvising flew from the soundboard — long and lyrical melodies, chains of gorgeous chords, intricate but inthe-moment counterpoint in which both hands sang separately. The components of his playing were always knit together into a larger, richer, organic whole, with a greater end in mind. He meant to take listeners on emotional journeys, and the small crowd joined him gladly.

You would never have guessed that the man at the keys had spent more than two months in 2008 in an AIDSrelated coma, or that he had to manage his health since his HIV infection was diagnosed in 1986. But these are elements of a human interest story that remained offstage Thursday as Hersch was fully immersed in making vibrant, utterly alive music.

With bassist John Hebert and drummer Eric McPherson, Hersch took an open and even conversational approach to original compositions and reconfigured jazz standards.

The trio opened with the well-known tune You’re My Everything, Hersch improvising from the get-go over McPherson’s bouncing beat.

He offered two epic mashups using tunes from the jazz repertoire. A wide-open combination of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman and Bill Evans’ Nardis was one of many highlights thanks to a tour-deforce solo by Hebert. Similarly, Hersch made a medley of Russ Freeman’s The Wind — a stark, dramatic piano solo — and Alec Wilder’s Moon And Sand — recast as an invigorating bossa-style tune.

Dedications were on Hersch’s mind in the church. For one, there was his original piece Sad Poet, a courtly, lyrical wonder that Hersch said was a nod to Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim. That piece concluded with McPherson building an epic solo at the kit, using brushes all the while. Hersch’s Dreams of Monk was a tribute to Thelonious Monk, yoking its inspiration’s quirkiness with Hersch’s own powerful lyricism.

But the dedication that drew applause from the crowd on the first night of the Ottawa Winter Jazz Festival was for the piece that Hersch said was for the late Jacques Emond, the Ottawa Jazz Festival’s longtime programming manager who died last month. Nothing was more beautiful than Hersch’s stately version of the Jerome Kern ballad The Song Is You. Emond would have been proud.