Narrative Medicine Rounds: Fred Hersch, Feb 1, 2012

As a solo pianist, composer, bandleader, and theatrical conceptualist, Fred Hersch lives up to the praise of the New York Times , who, in a featured Sunday Magazine piece, aptly declared him, “singular among the trailblazers of their art, a largely unsung innovator of this borderless, individualistic jazz - a jazz for the 21st century.” He has been nominated for two 2012 Grammy Awards for his solo CD Alone at the Vanguard. With three-dozen recordings as a leader/co-leader, and numerous awards and grants including a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and three previous Grammy® nominations, Hersch is among the most admired of contemporary jazz musicians, having collaborated with an astonishing rage of instrumentalists and vocalists throughout worlds of jazz, classical, and Broadway. Dubbed by Vanity Fair magazine as “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade or so, he was also the first artist in the 75-year history of New York's legendary Village Vanguard to play week-long engagements as a solo pianist. The leader of a celebrated trio whose Whirl found its way onto numerous 2010 best-recordings-of-the-year lists, Hersch also recently mounted the ambitious 2011 production, “ My Coma Dreams ,” a critically-acclaimed full-evening jazz-theater multimedia work. He is on the Jazz Studies Faculty of The New England Conservatory. Hersch has had HIV/AIDS for more than 25 years and survived a 2-month coma in the summer of 2008. www.fredhersch.com

[@erniepianezza8940]

I love u fred,id like to hug you for an hour and have some of your piano mastery seep into me :-) Like I've said previously,i tend to be heavy handed,but when im performing i channel you and lighten up!! Much Peace to you forever!!

[@juhintao3605]

A late but lucky discovery for me.