Ravinia 2019, Issue 3, Week 6

The opportunity to witness an artist at their peak doesn’t come around every day. But that’s a possibility for your summer, when acclaimed pianist Fred Hersch makes his Ravinia debut on Wednesday, July 3. This bold claim is all the more impressive, considering his biography. Having overcome multiple hardships and hurdles in life—most significantly, working his way back to jazz-maestro status after lying comatose for two months in 2008—Hersch, now 63 years old, has spent the last few years finding new summits in his long career. Both acclaimed and prolific, Hersch just came out with a new recording in June, Begin Again , featuring the WDR Big Band, a Cologne-based jazz ensem- ble. That’s the latest in a long discog- raphy; Palmetto Records released two albums least year, featuring two different incarnations of the Fred Hersch Trio. Meanwhile, Hersch earned six Grammy nominations in the past three years—in- cluding for his most recent solo album, 2017’s Open Book —bringing his lifetime total to 14. (His first Grammy nom came in 1993.) Other recent accolades include being named a Doris Duke Artist in 2016 and Jazz Pianist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2016 and 2018. Among the countless plaudits Hersch has earned in the press is the Los Angeles Times ’ observation that he possesses an “unerring ability to play music that is as intelligent as it is touching, as virtuosic as it is swinging.” And from The New Yorker : Hersch “has developed an inten- sity of intelligence and emotional direct- ness unparalleled among his peers.” It’s a remarkable place to be in life, riding high in the estimation of peers and critics with a busier-than-ever life of composing and performing. It’s especial- ly so for a sexagenarian who had to fight against a vast array of discrimination: first as a young prodigy drawn to a par- ticular art with a macho vibe that didn’t feel welcoming to gay men; later, as an HIV-positive musician battling both social stigma and dire health issues. “I felt like separating parts your life, keeping some sort of closet, comes with a price tag,” says Hersch, talking to Ravinia from his longtime home in New York—an artist’s loft in SoHo where he’s lived for 40 years—having just returned from performing in Belgium and Spain. He came out to his family at age 19; a much more public coming-out occurred in 1993, when he was in his late 30s—by then an acclaimed fixture in the jazz scene. “Artistically, I was really tired of living a dual life,” he explains. “I mean, my friends knew, and maybe it was common knowledge [in jazz circles]. But it’s a little different than making a statement in Newsweek or CNN or DownBeat .” His public statement about living with HIV was particularly bold, given that Hersch talked openly about the virus during a time when contracting it was practically a death sentence. “A lot of people said, ‘Fred, you shouldn’t do this. It’ll kill your career. Nobody will want to book you. They’ll figure you’ll be dead by next year.’ Which was possible,” he recalls. “But as time went on, I’ve beaten all kinds of odds in terms of my health. My career is bigger and better than ever. People have seen, ‘Hey, Fred seems to be doing great. He’s happy, and his music’s getting even more personal. Maybe I can come out and the world won’t end.’ I think there’s a gener- ation of jazz musicians who might have taken some inspiration from the way I handled it.” A Cincinnati native, Hersch is the fruit of a musically gifted lineage, with talent found on both sides of his family tree. His maternal grandfather, Fred Bloomberg, was a semiprofessional violinist and a founding member of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra; his paternal grandmother, Ella Hersch, was a trained pianist with a music degree. “I got a lot from both of them,” he says. “I remember my grandmother had a very nice old Steinway in her living room,” Hersch continues. “She didn’t really perform much, except for services at the synagogue, but I spent a lot of time at that piano.” He inherited her 1921 Steinway Model O piano in 1997, although it’s not currently in his 26 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 1 – JULY 14, 2019