by Fred Hersch
For the cover art, rather than the more obvious choice of a portrait of me (common for a first album), I selected a photograph of a rock formation jutting up from the ocean, with the horizon in the distance. It’s a geological wonder. The rock looks like a clay sculpture rather than a natural object, and appears like a human bust in left profile. It doesn’t mean anything literal to me; it’s an object of mysterious beauty molded by nature—a weirdly compelling protrusion into an expanse of calm sea.
Horizons was released in 1985, the year I turned thirty. Shortly after the record came out, Newsday published the first full-length profile of me, written by jazz writer Stuart Troup. The piece was published with a nice big photo of me, beaming and looking stylish in a vest and a thin eighties tie. The headline read, “Fred Hersch’s Time Has Come.” It made me feel that all my hard work was beginning to pay off.
Horizons got good reviews, and not only in the jazz press. The critic for the Chicago Tribune, Larry Kart, called the record “a pleasant surprise.” I don’t remember having ever met him, and I had never played in Chicago with my own band. I wonder what he had been expecting!
I wasn’t exactly surprised to see so many writers comparing me to Bill Evans. Though I didn’t play but one tune that was associated with him, I was recording with the bassist in his final trio—and I was white. The comparisons were favorable (no shame there) but, in my mind, somewhat simpleminded and misguided. I had been equally influenced by numerous other pianists—Paul Bley, Ahmad Jamal, Monk, and Herbie Hancock, to name a few—and I thought that was discernible in my performances on Horizons. In the Guardian, the headline for a review of Horizons went so far as to say, “Thank Evans.” I got this quite a bit early in my career from people who found that one of the things I could do was play a ballad with lyric sensitivity. This approach often made people think of Bill Evans, but that’s where they stopped thinking. While I’d always admired Evans, as most jazz pianists do, I’d never sought to emulate him slavishly, and if you listened closely, you’d hear that we didn’t actually sound that much alike (and we sound more and more different as the years have gone by). But all credit is due to Evans for making possible the conversational trio style by moving his left hand up toward the middle of the piano and adding voice leading to it, thereby giving the bass more of a chance to be an independent melodic and rhythmic voice and allowing the drums to add colors to the whole trio rather than just keep time.
As a matter of fact, the sound I had at the time of Horizons was not only much different from Evans’s but it was somewhat different from my sound today. When I listen to the album now, I recognize myself—but I hear a younger version of me with a different, slightly pushier energy than I have now. I was simply trying too hard to make a masterpiece. But this was my first album, and I was naturally eager to prove myself. My approach to some of the tunes was harder-hitting than it is now. But as I continued to study with Sophia Rosoff, learned how to employ my whole body to produce a holistic sound, and settled into myself as a person, my two-handed style matured.
If I sound defensive on the subject of Bill Evans, it’s partly because my individual identity as an artist is important to me, as it is with every jazz musician. Since Louis Armstrong first established jazz as a soloist’s art in the 1920s, individuality of expression has been a primary value in the music. No jazz artist wants to sound like anyone else, though creative theft is part of how the music evolves and every player has discernible musical influences, which you will discover if you know where to look. I am always pleased when someone says, “I turned on the radio and it was in the middle of a piano solo and I knew it was you.” To me, this is one of the highest compliments.
Another element in the Evans comparison, for me, was that Evans’s playing was often described as beautiful, lyrical, elegant, or romantic. (The beautiful, round sound that I fell in love with from his early Village Vanguard recordings did change through the years as drug use, mostly cocaine, began to take its toll.) Those were fair descriptions, and I have always been interested in beauty and lyricism as a pianist and composer—though I never allow the rhythm to take a backseat. The problem for me was that all those terms had traditionally been associated with male homosexuality in a restrictive and demeaning way. It was one thing for a straight man such as Evans—or Chet Baker or Miles Davis—to be praised for playing beautifully. But for a gay man to be described that way, it was almost like saying, Of course he plays beautifully—he’s gay!
The listening public did not yet know that I was gay, and that’s part of the reason I was so uneasy with being associated with Evans and his school of lush romanticism. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I had just about had my fill of leading a double life. From the day I had run to hide Eric’s toothbrush before Stan Getz could see it, the folly of hiding my sexual identity had sunk in. Still, I hadn’t determined how to come out to the jazz world, and I wanted to do it wisely, in my own way and at the right time.
This might be hard for a young gay person of the twenty-first century to understand. Today, in many cases, gay or transgender kids as early as middle school can tell their family, friends, and teachers about their sexual or gender identity, and a lot of people will just nod and say, “Okay.” There are gay-straight alliances in high schools. As I write this, an openly gay man is serving as secretary of the army. Discrimination against transgender soldiers is prohibited in the military. The mid-1980s were a very different time, though, and the rise of AIDS only added to the stigma attached to homosexuality for some time. In the early years of the epidemic, hatemongers glommed onto AIDS as a sign that God was punishing homosexuals for their deviance. Some young gay men today have a hard time relating to what my generation lived through in the early days of the disease, caring for our sick and dying, angry as hell about the lack of treatment—and as a result, some are more cavalier about their sexual practices. The rate of infection in the United States has remained fairly constant in recent years despite all of the education out there about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. There is still no cure, but most people who are newly infected can take one or two pills a day and keep the virus at bay if they start treatment immediately after their diagnosis.
I was just about ready to come out to the jazz world as a bandleader and recording artist when I learned that I definitely had AIDS. In May 1986, the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses announced that the cause of AIDS was HIV, human immunodeficiency virus. The first test to verify the presence of the virus in patients soon followed. That year I took the HIV test anonymously at the Community Health Center on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea. When I came back a week later, they confirmed that I was positive and asked if I wanted counseling. I declined. I had to work out a good way to handle it on my own. In the meantime, it was challenge enough to break the news of my illness to my family.
Though I had told my family at age nineteen that I was gay and didn’t get a negative reaction, I don’t remember how or when I told each of my parents about my HIV status or what their reactions were. I do recall that they were both appropriately concerned for me. But I have a precise recollection of when I told my brother, who, after graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism, was living in New York and writing for Sports Illustrated. He has been an important part of my life both as a support and as a friend. He and I had grown very close, and I told him in person. Hank’s response was so real, so genuinely connected, that I was able to cry for the first time since my diagnosis, knowing how much he felt for me. In 1986 there was an opening in the loft across the hall from me. I helped him get into the building. As I look back, I imagine that I was thinking, If I get really sick, he will be there to take care of me. But that turned out to be a long way away.
Courtesy of the author
Me, age four, with my brother, Hank, just under two years old
Courtesy of the author
Me, age thirteen, and Hank, age eleven, jamming at the family home
Courtesy of the author
My high sc
hool senior picture, 1973
Courtesy of the author
With Hank and my dad, Henry, July 1976
Copyright © Susan Wides
My first publicity photo in New York, 1977
Courtesy of the author
Me with an unidentified man in Key West, 1986
Copyright © Sharon Hersch
With Hank the night of the Grammy® Awards, NYC, 2004
Copyright © Steve J. Sherman
With Hank and my mom, Flo, at the Classical Action: Fred Hersch & Friends concert, Town Hall, NYC, 1998
Copyright © Andy Schocken
With Scott Morgan at our house in Pennsylvania, 2012
Copyright © Steve J. Sherman
With my piano teacher Sophia Rosoff, NYC, 2003
Copyright © Rich Polk. The GRAMMY Nominee Medallion is a registered trademark of The Recording Academy® and is used under license.
With Scott at the Grammy® Awards, Los Angeles, 2015
Copyright © Lourdes Delgado
In my loft, 2013
Copyright © Stephanie Berger, 2017. All rights reserved.
World premiere of My Coma Dreams, Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey, 2011
Copyright © W. Patrick Hinely
Listening to a playback at Systems Two Recording Studio, 1995
Copyright © Rick Luettke
In front of the Village Vanguard, 1997
Copyright © Joanna Eldredge Morrissey
Composing at Veltin Studio, the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire, 2000
Copyright © Luciana Pampalone
Promo photo, 2003
Copyright © Annie Imbaud
Playing trio in Paris, 2016, with John Hébert, bass; and Eric McPherson, drums
Copyright © Steve J. Sherman
Playing piano four-hands with Dr. Billy Taylor at Classical Action: Fred Hersch & Friends
Copyright © Matthew Sussman
Playing solo at the Village Vanguard, 2005
CHAPTER 9
OUT
My first album could be my last. I had no reason to feel any other way. Because I learned that I was living with HIV around the same time I started making my own records, my illness and my music were inextricably linked in my mind. There was a death cloud hanging over my head from the time of my first effort as a recording artist.
It is a truism of homosexual history in America that the gay male subculture was forced to grow up when the AIDS crisis developed. I saw this all around me and felt it myself. Suddenly, being gay was not only about having sex or enjoying the company of other men like you, it was about sickness and taking care of friends and lovers who were dying. The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was formed, and many of us began to sound like medical students as we read up on the virus and its effects. We banded together to pressure the government to fund the development of antiretroviral medications and fast-track treatments for opportunistic infections that occurred as a result of having HIV. I was officially diagnosed as HIV positive; drugs to treat it were still years down the road. To be HIV positive was to be terminally ill—though by the Centers for Disease Control guidelines, you went from being positive to having AIDS if your T-cell count was below 200 or you had one of the infections associated with immune suppression. (At some points in my life I have had AIDS, at others I have been just HIV positive; it is a fluid diagnosis.)
Always career-oriented and serious about my work, I now made music with a fierce urgency. Time felt more precious than ever. Soon after I recorded Horizons, I made a duo record with the soprano saxophonist and composer Jane Ira Bloom, whom I had gotten to know through Charlie Haden. Jane, who is almost exactly my age, had come to New York the same year I did, after studying music at Yale. She stood out among musicians of our generation as a distinctive composer who made formally adventurous music that always had deep feeling and soulfulness. And we found that we had a lot in common. I have always loved playing with her, and I treasure what we’ve brought out in each other. We called the album As One. We recorded “Janeology,” which I wrote in Jane’s honor (an abstract take on the chord changes of Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”), and “A Child’s Song,” a tribute to Charlie Haden, who grew up in Missouri as part of the singing Haden Family. There has always been a folkish element to his playing, and I allude to that in this composition. I included it on the next trio album I made, with Charlie himself on bass and Joey Baron on drums. I named the album Sarabande, for a Bach-inspired composition of mine.
Bach has been part of my musical life for as long as I have been playing the piano. Although his music is superbly and rigorously crafted, a monument to one of the great minds of all time, his music is always lyrical and rhythmic, never sacrificing emotion. When I close my eyes and play his music, I feel myself stepping into his beautiful, timeless world—much as I try to do when I play jazz. My favorite Bach keyboard works are the six Partitas. They are larger-scale counterparts to his six French Suites and six English Suites; in fact, they are sometimes known as the German Suites. Of course, I love the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and all the rest, but I prefer the Partitas because each movement is based on a dance rhythm. Many are characteristic dances of various countries—the allemande is German, the courante is French, and the sicilienne is Italian—and some, such as the gigue and the minuet, were popular court dances of the day. Because of these dance origins, the individual movements of each suite have a rhythmic liveliness that is infectious. The Partitas are virtuoso masterpieces of the baroque dance suite form for keyboard, and each contains an exquisite slow movement in three-quarter time called a sarabande. I decided to use this as the inspiration because I wanted to write a tune in three-four that didn’t feel like a waltz.
I finished one album and started the next one, with another project or two brewing on the side. In 1989 I released three albums, each exploring its own musical territory. The clock was ticking, and I wanted to express myself in as many musical ways as possible, wanting to be remembered. Short Stories was a voice-and-piano duo recording with Janis Siegel, a founding member of the Manhattan Transfer who shared my affection for both jazz tunes by lyric-oriented composers such as Dave Frishberg and recent-vintage pop by literate singer-songwriters such as Julia Fordham and Todd Rundgren. (This was the last album recorded at Classic Sound, in 1988.) On The French Collection, produced by Mike Berniker and Ettore Stratta, I wrote chamber-jazz reconsiderations of eleven works by impressionist composers, including Debussy’s Prelude from Suite Bergamasque and Ravel’s Prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin, with a trio and some all-star guest artists. The third album, Heartsongs, featured my working trio with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jeff Hirshfield. Along with arrangements of pieces by some of my favorite jazz composers there were five new tunes of my own. Two of these, “Heartsong” and “Lullabye,” have become signature tunes—and are now widely sung with wonderful lyrics added by British vocalist-lyricist Norma Winstone.
I was beginning to hit my stride as a writer of jazz tunes, and my range of compositional expression was widening. I was working feverishly to express myself in as many ways as possible and to be recognized—and remembered—before it was too late. I was taking more and more chances on every level. And with the first selection on Heartsongs, George and Ira Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” I winked in the direction of my gay identity. Other than loving playing the song, I selected it—and its title—to make a statement even though I didn’t have a partner at that time and longed for one. After that, I decided, I would give up the winking. There would be no more innuendo.
In 1991 I began work on an album of original material for the Chesky Record label, which I titled Forward Motion and saw very much as a statement of renewed purpose and new candor. I used a quintet with an unusual front line of tenor sax and ’cello and billed it as the Fred Hersch Group. With this project I sought to make clearer my musical identity as a composer and a pianist, as well as my identit
y as a gay man. Not knowing how much longer I would be around, I saw no reason to be in any kind of closet. Indeed, I would begin to reconcile my musical and personal selves in a public way. I was moving forward.
Of the fourteen tracks on Forward Motion, thirteen were my own compositions. The one exception was “Frevo,” a deliciously exciting piece by the Brazilian guitarist/pianist/composer Egberto Gismonti, which I had heard him play on several recordings. Gismonti is one of the great musicians of our time. He manages to marry the rhythm and harmony of all the various strands of Brazilian music with a classical and jazz sensibility and has amazing virtuosity on two instruments that could not be more unlike each other. Two of my tunes on the album, “Tango Bittersweet” and “…departed” were directly inspired by the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic. The mournful “Tango”—a duet for piano and ’cello, played by Erik Friedlander—I conceived of as the music for the dance of death. And “…departed” was a heartfelt, yet understated, solo piano homage to those I knew who had died of AIDS.