Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Heard Fresh: Innovative Jazz Pianist Fred Hersch

The Cincinnati-born Jewish jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who will be giving a much-anticipated solo concert on March 31 at New York’s Weill Recital Hall, has been scaling barriers for decades.

One of the few openly gay musicians in the surprisingly closeted and macho world of jazz, Hersch has also been HIV-positive since 1986, conquering many related health issues since then. A prolific recording artist for such labels as Nonesuch and Sunnyside, Hersch cheerfully told one interviewer: “I was raised Jewish, Americanized Reform Jew, so I guess that makes me a ‘Jew-Bu’!”

On a representative CD, “Fred Hersch Plays Rodgers & Hammerstein,” Hersch applies layers of complexity and contradiction to apparently simple Rodgers tunes like “A Cock-Eyed Optimist” and “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top,” until they sound like part of a highly intellectualized, quasi-Talmudic discourse.

On another brilliant CD, “Let Yourself Go (Live at Jordan Hall),” Hersch is the same uncompromising guide through multi-layered sonic experience. Whether he’s interpreting Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low”; Gershwin’s “I Loves You, Porgy”; or Irving Berlin’s “Let Yourself Go,” nothing is facile or prefabricated.

A skilled composer himself, Hersch offers analytic understanding of jazz moderns, especially Duke Ellington’s legendary composer and colleague, the openly gay Billy Strayhorn. The CD “Passion Flower: Fred Hersch Plays Billy Strayhorn” features a particularly telling solo on Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group),” named in tribute to the office of Strayhorn and Ellington’s personal physician; Hersch’s own medical dramas over the past decades may have given him extra insight into this unusual homage. Likewise, the CD “Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk,” offers a particularly tender and affectionate version of Thelonious Monk’s “Pannonica,” titled in honor of Nica Rothschild, the subject of the recent documentary “The Jazz Baroness.” Always authentic and rewarding to hear, Hersch is an always-welcome presence on the jazz scene.

Watch the trailer for the documentary ‘Let Yourself Go: The Lives of Fred Hersch’:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.