You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - A Conversation With Fred Hersch

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Jazz piano guru Fred Hersch discusses his craft in this interview excerpt. Want to hear the full interview? Check out Fred's new course from Open Studio: Thoughts and Experiments With Solo Piano * Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipe at https://link.youllhearit.com/speakpipe* Support the pod by spreading the word with the link openstudiojazz.link/yhi* Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Hey, what's up, everybody. Adam Anas here. We are still on our summer hiatus. Peter Martin's traveling right now. I'm off next week, so we won't be back until September. But we wanted to give you a little bit of a gift to tide you over. I wanted to share part of an interview with the great Fred Hirsch. This is from his open studio course, thoughts and experiments in solo piano. Fred is being interviewed here by one of our open studio team members and very fine pianists in his own right, Brian Fielding. They're old friends. Brian has no. known Fred and studied with Fred for years and years and years. And in this excerpt of the almost hour-long interview, Brian and Fred talk about some really, really cool and important things. It starts off with kind of a talking about mindfulness at the instrument. And then it goes into Fred just discussing what it was like to come of age and learn about jazz piano in New York in the 70s, surrounded by, you know, these masters like Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris. And it's just a really fascinating look into the life and the career of one of our favorite pianists around here at Open Studio and you'll hear a podcast. And we thought you would enjoy it.

So please enjoy this conversation with Fred Hirsch. A lot of what I've talked about in this course is pretty much akin to a meditation practice. When you sit down on a cushion for, let's say, a half an hour and you put your little timer there, you don't really know what's going to happen. You might be fidgety, you might be planning, you might get tired, your shoulders might hurt, or you might be in this beautiful flow of being with the breath or the hearing sensations or the feel of your body on the cushion, and that could last for 10 breaths. or it could last for 10 minutes.

When we sit at the piano, if we can take, you know, a half an hour and say, okay, let's see what happens during this half hour. And maybe during that half hour, you pick maybe three little things to try, three little experiments in a half an hour. And they can be really anything at all. What happens if I do this? if I do this over this period of time. And the important thing is,

when you're meditating, you just need to be with what is. You don't want to judge it. Thoughts are not bad. You don't push them away. You go, thinking. You're just, okay, I'm thinking. And just the fact you're aware of thinking

is in itself awareness. And when we're sitting at the piano, what we're doing is essentially an action. of meditation. We are doing something in real time. So what you played is what you just played. The challenge comes in is when you think about what you just played. Or you judge what you just played. Yes. If you judge what you just played, then you're... Guilty is charged. Right. Yeah, right. Or, I mean, it's good to, to, you know, you can think about it, but you don't want to, like, think with a capital T about it. Or put

a rule on it, oh, I should have done it this way. Or, yeah, you don't want to load it. It's a phrase. Okay, what happens next? I don't know. We're having a conversation. I don't know what you're going to say in a minute. That's cool.

I'm saying what I'm saying now, and you're saying what you're saying now. And so that's where we need to be when we play music, especially most importantly improvised music. Here we were focused on solo piano, of course, right? And so thinking about your body of work, I mean, you typically are solo duo or trio, at least for the last decade or two. The occasional larger group ensemble, obviously,

my coma dreams and some chamber works. But your conception and solo, you know, you typically structure your sets with the American Songbook or classic jazz compositions or Fred Hirsch compositions, structured songs. And then you think about other solo pianists in the tradition, Cecil Taylor comes to mind, Keith Jared comes on, who are different than that kind of solo piano.

There's obviously been other great soloists that the solo players that play off of tunes. But Keith and Cecil, not that I know them personally, they call them by their first days, but, you know, come from a completely different sort of frame. Can you talk a little bit about you and that sort of lineage. Uh-huh.

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned those two names. When I was a budding jazz pianist in Cincinnati, Ohio at age 18 or 19, the way that I looked at it then was sort of we had the North and South Poles of solo piano at that time, Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett. And Cecil's music is fiercely intelligent and kind of ferocious, a lot of it. Keith was coming out of being a tune player with Charles Lloyd, then being a composer, mostly,

in his American quartet with Dewey Redman and Charlie Hayden and Palmotion, and was also segueing into these just sitting down and seeing what happened solo concerts. And when I first heard, the Bremen and Lozahn concert, and believe I've actually played in that Bramon Hall, and it is special. It was a real eye-opener for a lot of people. For a lot of us.

For a lot of people. And then, of course, the Kohln concert, which was a huge success. Now, Bremen and Lozern was in like 75 or something. Well, he did Facing You and then Bramon and Lozahn. That's why I wanted to bring up was Facing You, because Facing You is a studio album. Facing You as a studio album. So, well, at some point, let's dig into the differentials between you. Yeah, but I've seen Cecil many times.

I was privileged to know him a little bit. And the last time I saw him was at the North Sea Festival in Holland. He was playing solo, and he had pieces of paper all over the piano. So his music, one of his famous albums was called Unit Structures. I mean, his music was actually very structured in his own. language. Keith was very, you know, if he wanted to hang out on G major for a while, well, he'd just hang out on G major for a while, you know. And he made it... Not in Facing You though, right? No, Facing You is more concise, like more defined

pieces, original pieces. Chick-Korea was doing things a little bit like that at that time. Volume 1 and 2. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's such a rich tradition in solo piano. And especially when I started working a bit with Jackie Byard at New England Conservatory in 75 through 77, I really became aware of the whole history of solo piano. You turned me on to Roland Hanna's Alone with the Blues. Is that? Yes. Sir Roland Hanna, he was a great influence.

And actually, I got to know him quite well among many other people. many other pianists by hanging out at this famous club, Bradley's, where I was very close with Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris and Sir Roland Hanna and Jimmy Rolls and Kirk Leitze and John Hicks and, you know, so many people that hung out at that club, great pianists. And it was Sir Roland that said to me, I think you have the makings of a good solo player. You should really think about that. And I made my first trio album for the Concord Jazz label when I was 30, because I was about

1985 or so. And then I made my first solo album, ironically also for Concord Jazz, which was live at Maybeck. They did a remarkable series of 40 or 50 solo piano albums all done in this beautiful wooden jewel of a concert hall that's seated maybe 50 people. The sound they got, I thought it was extraordinary. And you'd play on Sunday afternoon, and it was live, and that was your album. You know, no retakes, no second takes.

You played a concert, that was it. You have a song on your album, Heartland, which I love. Right. You play a little bright on that. I think you're thinking of heart song. I am thinking of heart song. Yeah, that was a lot faster than. play it now. Is it okay? Yeah, and I play the song as you much faster than I play it now.

And over the years of making records, this is 35 years of a discography at this point, there are certain tunes that I've recorded two or three times in different ways or in different configurations or different instrumentations, mine or other people's songs. And I guess I think if you think of the visual arts, you know, a classic theme would be a bowl of fruit, a still life, or a landscape, or a nude, or something like that. You know, the basic things that you think of art school students dealing with. Well, the way that we deal with standards, those are the things, like when I hear somebody

play a tune that I've heard played many times, it sort of lets me know where that person is at because I have something not to compare it to in a bad way, but I have a sense of whether they have command of it or the language or the pianistic ability. So I don't think that the ultimate version of Stella by Starlight has been played yet, or autumn leaves, or body and soul. I think there's always room for different interpretations of these great themes. So you don't have to play an original composition to be original. That's that's a that's the beauty of his music. But Keith's thing from in the Bremen-Lussern era, right? It feels like he would approach the piano as an empty vessel. Not that you don't, but if, but it's still a slightly

it's a slightly different approach, right? Right. Yeah. I, I, what's gonna come up for him in the moment who's coughing in the audience or all that kind of stuff yeah I'm I'm kind of of the theme in variation school you know I mean and with solo piano as I've discussed in this course you have the possibility of making what I call continuous music instead of marking choruses or sections you can blur those lines and create tensions and create longer forms I've done a lot of what I call open improvisation projects. And for instance, on my album open book,

there's a 20-minute open improvisation, which is not typical of me. It's just something that came to me. And I said, oh, this is interesting, and keep rolling with it. Wasn't anything I set out to do. And you have some child song. That has, yeah, that there's no chord changes. Yeah, and then you just flow.

Yeah, it's like whatever happens, happens. It's just like a launch pad, a vibe. a theme you can work with or not. And I played with a lot of musicians who we might consider more open music players. I don't like the term free, free jazz. Charlie Hayden is on the one recording where... Yes, I play some Ornette Coleman music

with Charlie Hayden, which was a great honor. You played turnaround tonight, right? I played turnaround, yes, which is a very traditional Ornette Coleman piece. Yeah, but you made it Fred's tune. That was a gorgeous performance. What did Sir Roland Hana say to you, or what was the context of his conversation with you,

suggesting that you played solo? Well, I think he heard maybe the fact that I was very passionate about chords and harmony and the way that they're voiced, how they resonate. Was that hearing you at Bradley's? Yeah, and one afternoon just hanging out, house. So Bradley is, I know you came, you were at New England Conservatory for a minute or two. Graduated in 1977. So you actually graduated. I actually graduated. So many cats go, they go for a year and they go,

well, then I got a call from Carmen McCrae or I got a call to Katie Carter. I hung out. And then you, I know you moved to like within spittance distance of Bradley. 11th Street and university place in the village. Yeah. And was Knickerbacher doing its thing then or that took another couple years, right? It took a couple years. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about Bradley's and just that vibe and that era and your experience and how it helped you blossom. Yeah, just to paint a picture for younger musicians of what New York was like in the late

70s, the city was essentially bankrupt, crime was high. There were four channels of television. There was no internet. The only technology was a... answering machine. Yeah, there were no cell phones. So what happened was everybody went out every night. You'd go, who's playing there?

Okay, let's go to this club. Oh, yeah, okay, let's catch the last set there. Or let's go out for drinks or dinner. Or I'll meet you at so-and-so. There was a feeling of a social one-to-one or group dynamic. And Bradley's was the place where all the jazz musicians, the line used to be everybody ends up at Bradley's.

So you finish... On any given day. On any given day. Right. On any given night. So people would play at the Village Vanguard, finish at 2-ish, head over to Bradleys and hang out till 4.

All the piano players and bass players hung out there. There was an arcane cabaret law that said you couldn't have drum. if you were within certain feet of a church or whatever noise thing. I don't know. So Bradley Cunningham came up with this idea of piano-based duos and that was the format there. I was lucky to play with so many great bass players, Sam Jones, Buster Williams, Charlie Hayden, Ron Carter, George Moraz, Bob Cranshaw, on and on and on over the years at Bradley's. And piano players...

I heard you there many times. It's surprising we didn't meet there. We did end up meeting in 1980, but Nickerbockers had already had just opened, I think. Yes, probably. Not you and I, but myself alone, mostly, but often with friends, we'd bounce between Nickerbocker and Bradley's between sets. Yes, university place in the village. Yeah, a couple blocks of blocks of block.

But we met it, I think you were, I think you were getting at Nickerbocker. I probably was. I'm a mutual friend of ours. Right. Yeah. So, you know, oftentimes people with, a pianist would get around the piano and you could say, hey, on this Billy Strayhorn tune, like, what, you know, how do you negotiate that? Or what changes do you play on this?

Cedar Walton taught me the bridge to around midnight. Right. At about three in the morning. See, there you go. You know, I saw Jimmy Roll. and Tommy Flanagan have cutting contests. Like, do you know this tune? I don't know, I'll play it.

Do you know this tune? You know, back and forth. It was a magical time to be in New York and to play with the legends that I got to play with during that time. And, you know, through my sideman years and my 20s, getting a chance to play with so many legends and hang out with them

and have a drink at the bar with Art Blakey and, you know, say hello to Charles Mingo. Joni Mitchell. And yeah, say hello to Joni Mitchell. You know, it was like a beautiful time before jazz became a little more institutionalized. Before now, of course, every school has a jazz department or jazz program. Back then there were a handful of schools that acknowledged jazz in the mid-70s. And before big institutions like SF Jazz,

and Jazz Lincoln Center. So mostly gigs were clubs or tours in Europe, some concerts. People didn't have, you know, stylists and publicists. So you'd hang out with these great legends, and the big ones had agents, but everybody was approachable. At the time, we had the Vanguard Suite Basil didn't come on for another couple of years. No, that was open then. In 80?

Was it an 80? Nickerbocker, Bradley's, Fat Tuesdays. There were so many jazz streets. I mean, that's just five right there. And you can't basically count five. I mean, COVID notwithstanding. Yeah, well, there were so many little clubs in the village that had pianos, what we called restaurant gigs.

There were hotel gigs that had piano players. I mean, I spent many years playing in the Catskills, playing weddings. doing charts for singers, accompanying. And I was doing something or another five nights a week for many, many years. It's interesting that for you personally, Bradley's, I'm sort of viewing it as ground zero. Yes, that was ground zero. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I started, you know, my career such as it was. And then, you know, these days, most young musicians have made an album even before they're out of music school.

But back then you had to have a record company. They were pressing vinyl. You know, you couldn't do that yourself. You had to have the resources of a record label and to pay for the studio and all that kind of stuff. You couldn't do it in your living room. So I've lived through all these great eras, but I think the thing that I want to emphasize is, I'm part of the last generation that learned jazz by doing it, by playing it, by the oral tradition of asking questions, of hearing people, of just hanging around. The slightly, Joe Levano, the great tenor player, is slightly older than I. He comes from Cleveland.

I come from Cincinnati. His father was a tenor player. So he learned in that way, too. We're part of that, that batch of players that, even though in my case, I did go to music school, very fine music school, but I did not go there to study jazz. I went there to study music. be a better musician, to get exposed to Renaissance music and 20th century music and play chamber music and, you know, play in a big band and hang out with musicians who had different interests

and backgrounds. And then coming to New York and just, you know, jam sessions and all that kind of stuff, it was a, you know, musicians were not expected. to be composers. They were not expected to be business people. They were not expected. There was no social media. They were artists. They were, but they were, I mean, and I have to say largely, male. Everybody was kind of like a cat on the scene, whether you were Art Blakey or me. I mean, you were a guy looking for a gig.