Fred Hersch - Open Book (2017) [FLAC24]
弗莱德·赫谢 - 一目了然
Personnel: Fred Hersch (b.1955), Jazz Pianist & Composer 弗莱德·赫谢 (http://fredhersch.com/)
Format: FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44.1 kHz
Source: Studio Master, Official Digital Download
Artwork: Front Cover
Genres: Jazz
Label: Palmetto Records (https://www.palmetto-records.com/)
Rls. date: Sep 8 2017
Fred Hersch has long been acclaimed as an exploratory artist, an outspoken activist, an influential educator and a uniquely revelatory and lyrical pianist. As one of the most expressive voices in modern jazz, Hersch has never been shy about letting listeners glimpse his most intimate thoughts and emotions. In September, however, Hersch’s fans will be treated to even deeper, more revealing insights into the story of the renowned pianist when he publishes his much-anticipated memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz. As a companion piece, Hersch decided to present an equally direct and vulnerable glimpse into his private musical thoughts with his 11th solo release, Open Book.
The seven pieces on Open Book (out September 8 on Palmetto Records) offer some of the finest, most unguardedly emotional solo music that Hersch has created in a career unique for its profound poignancy and passion. Recorded in a South Korean concert hall on a superb Hamburg Steinway concert grand piano, the album captures the vital essence of the revelatory adventurousness and intense beauty that have made Hersch one of the most important solo artists in jazz. With more than 40 albums to his credit as a leader or co-leader, Hersch remarkably continues to discover new areas of inspiration and depths of feeling.
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Veteran pianist Fred Hersch casts a wide net on this engrossing solo album. He harks back to his roots in hard-swinging post-bop with Benny Golson’s classic “Whisper Not.” He pays homage to Thelonious Monk with “Eronel.” He picks a Jobim song, two originals, and the closing Billy Joel ode “And So It Goes.” But the centerpiece, a nearly 20-minute free improvisation titled “Through the Forest,” seems to yoke it all together: it’s Hersch at his most fearless and unfiltered, building dynamic arcs with dazzling technical control.
In the aftermath of his coma and very possible demise back in 2008, pianist Fred Hersch blossomed from a status as a first rate jazz pianist into the rarified air of one of the handful of top practitioners of that art form. A series of post-illness albums, from Whirl (2010), to Alone At The Vanguard (2011) to Floating (2014), Solo (2015) and Sunday Night At the Vanguard (2016), all on Palmetto Records, are all solo and trio outings that reveal a heightened artistic clarity and unabashed vulnerability, alongside a deeper emotive approach, this in comparison to his uniformly excellent, but perhaps more cerebral output before his struggle with serious health problems.
Now we have Open Book, Hersch's eleventh solo piano outing.
Intimacy is a hallmark of Hersch's music, and "The Orb," the set's opener, taken from Hersch's autobiographical music/theater piece, My Coma Dreams, is the tenderest, loveliest of love songs, a look at a paramour through, with justification it seems, rose-colored glasses. "Whisper Not," Benny Golson's classic tune, takes things into a turn of the playful, via crisp, prancing piano notes singing over a serious and assertive left hand. Hersch visits an old friend, Antonio Carlo Jobim, with "Zingaro," a sublime reverie.
The centerpiece, "Through The Forest," is something unheard of on record by Hersch. It's a nineteen minutes-plus, stream-of-consciousness, improvised in-the-moment masterpiece. An ebb and flow dreamscape of sorts—the most fragile of delicacies and the most sacred and quiet moments slipped in beside emphatic percussive energy—music as enchanting as anything the pianist has ever created.
Then in walks Monk. Hersch includes a Thelonious Monk tune in most every set, most every recording. "Eronel" is a spritely interpretation by Hersch, who immerses himself the challenging music deeper than most anybody, peppering the stride-side with sparkling, water-splashing-off-the-rocks sounds, rolling into jagged eddies, leading into the closer, Billy Joel's "And So It Goes," solemn, simple, honest, beautiful.
Honesty—another hallmark of Hersch's art.
This is a recording that makes it seem as though Fred Hersch is the finest jazz pianist in the world. That's an impossible assertion, of course. There are a dozen, maybe more pianists who have achieved this level artistry. But for now, with Open Book, he can wear that title. ~ By DAN MCCLENAGHAN (allaboutjazz)
Tracklist:
1 The Orb 06:26
2 Whisper Not 06:28
3 Zingaro 07:58
4 Through the Forest 19:35
5 Plainsong 04:41
6 Eronel 05:40
7 And so It Goes 05:57
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发表于 2020-1-19 17:00:43
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