Fred Hersch, solo piano

The spring series opens on Sunday, March 10, with a long-awaited return by celebrated jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who last appeared on the Athenaeum series in 2016 with clarinetist Anat Cohen. A select member of jazz’s piano pantheon, Hersch is a pervasively influential creative force who has shaped jazz music’s course over more than three decades as an improviser, composer, educator, bandleader, collaborator, and recording artist. He has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair, “an elegant force of musical invention” by the Los Angeles Times, and “a living legend” by The New Yorker. A 15-time Grammy nominee, Hersch has regularly garnered jazz’s most prestigious awards, including recent distinctions as a 2016 Doris Duke Artist, 2016 and 2018 Jazz Pianist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association, and the 2017 Prix Honorem de Jazz from L’Acádemie Charles Cros for the totality of his career.

Nowhere is the boundless range and emotional diversity of Hersch’s artistry as evident as in his breathtaking solo performances. JazzTimes has hailed his unaccompanied playing as “a complete, self-sufficient, uniquely pure art form,” while All About Jazz has remarked that “when it comes to the art of solo piano in jazz, there are two classes of performers: Fred Hersch and everybody else.” Of his 2020 quarantine solo album, Songs from Home, NPR’s All Songs Considered called it “the week’s most necessary listen,” and it was named one of the Ten Best Jazz Albums of 2020 by Slate.