Biography

Fred Hersch's biography

Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been called “one of the small handful of brilliant musicians of his generation” by Downbeat magazine and has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. From the late 1970s onward as a sideman to jazz legends including Joe Henderson, Art Farmer and Stan Getz, he has solidified a reputation as a versatile master of jazz piano, as well as a relentlessly probing composer and conceptualist. Whether unaccompanied, in duo, working with trios and quintets, Hersch has explored the jazz tradition to its fullest even as he opens new and undiscovered doors. Hersch’s numerous accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance and a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition. He has appeared on over a hundred recordings, including more than two-dozen albums as bandleader/solo pianist. He has also collaborated with artists ranging from Bill Frisell, Toots Thielemans and Charlie Haden to singers Renée Fleming, Norma Winstone and Audra McDonald. He has received commissions from The Gilmore Keyboard Festival, The Doris Duke Foundation, The Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The Gramercy Trio and The Brooklyn Youth Chorus. His solo piano compositions and chamber music are published by Edition Peters. Hersch is considered to be the most prolific and widely-praised solo jazz pianist of his generation. In 2006, Palmetto Records released the solo album Fred Hersch in Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis; its release led him to become the first pianist in the 70-year history of New York’s legendary Village Vanguard to play an entire week as a solo pianist shortly after the album’s release. In addition, he leads a trio, a quintet and has ongoing special collaborations with jazz and classical instrumentalists and vocalists around the world. His newest project features a line-up of piano, trumpet, voice and percussion; The Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra: Live at Jazz Standard will be released in April 2009 on Sunnyside Records.
Hersch has acted as a passionate spokesman and fund-raiser for AIDS services and education agencies since 1993. He has produced and performed on four benefit recordings and at numerous concerts for the charities Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS that have raised over $250,000 to date. He has been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer. A committed educator, he has taught at The New School and Manhattan School of Music; he is currently a visiting professor at Western Michigan University and is on the Jazz Studies faculty of The New England Conservatory.

www.fredhersch.com