There is something profoundly humbling about bumping into artistic greatness. I felt that last night at the Village Vanguard, listening to the extraordinary Fred Hersch play solo piano. He is a jazz man who fuses the cerebral with the lyric; who can take a tune like Joni Mitchell’s ‘My Own Man’ and transform it into a searching, profound musical essay on love and loss (I rather like the original song as well). Hersch is not a showy performer. On the contrary his mien is that of an university lecturer: quiet, somewhat introverted, drily witty. His personal story is an extraordinary one. As noted in his Wikipedia listing: “In 2008, Hersch developed HIV-induced dementia. He then fell into a coma which lasted two months. When he regained conciousness, he had lost all muscular function as a result of his long inactivity and could not play the piano. After intense rehabilitation, he made a full recovery”. Listening to Hersch play solo over the past three nights at the Vanguard - yes, I made a point of attending a trio of late sets - I couldn’t help but think that the intense serenity that characterizes his playing, the way he is always finding new interpretative avenues in his musical language, the fusing of the poetic with a jazzman’s sensibility, the way he can switch from a Robert Schumann influenced work to hard bob... suffice to say, I truly felt I was in the presence of genius, not to mention an artist who managed to rise, phoenix-like, from the abyss. Life is rendered so dense by so much sound and fury, largely signifying nothing (to paraphrase ‘Macbeth’). As underscored by the fact that I walked into the Vanguard last night feeling rather world-weary after a small setback. An hour listening to Fred Hersch put it all in perspective. I left the Vanguard with one simple, essential thought ricocheting around my head: how lucky I am to be alive.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 20:23:15 +0000
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