SONGS FROM HOME (vinyl)

Description

Pianist and composer Fred Hersch celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday in quarantine with a brilliant new solo album recorded in his Pennsylvania home. In *Songs From Home*, Hersch explores nostalgic pop songs, touching originals, and resonant jazz classics with his inimitable expressiveness and rich inventiveness in the intimacy of enforced isolation. When the United States went into lockdown earlier this year, pianist and composer Fred Hersch was among the first to find a new way forward, every afternoon for nearly two months with his 'Tune of the Day' performances on Facebook. The experience inspired his intimate and profound new solo album, 'Songs From Home'. The ten tracks respond to the turmoil of the outside world with an embrace of nostalgia and warmth, captured in the tranquility of the pianist's rural home in Pennsylvania. "It's a kind of comfort food album," Hersch admits, "with some tough stuff in there too. I didn't want to make an easy-listening record, but I wanted to play music that would make people happy." Comfort and happiness are too rare these days, as a global pandemic rages and the United States has experienced the most controversial and consequential election in generations. In this context, Hersch celebrates his 65th birthday in October, reaching retirement age while facing the uncertain future of a music industry in crisis. He recently did his part to help his peers, releasing a duo album in June 2020 with bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America's COVID-19 Musicians Emergency Fund. 'Songs From Home' is a more personal undertaking, a showcase for his remarkable solo playing as well as an expression of hope for better days to come. Recording in the comfort and intimacy of his own home has obvious advantages, but it also presents its own unique challenges, not least of which are the eccentricities of an instrument designed solely as a practice tool. "Any solo record is essentially about the relationship between the pianist and the particular piano," Hersch says. "My piano is a 50-year-old, seven-foot Steinway Model B, and there are certain things it does extremely well and others that are a bit more imperfect. Steinways all have personalities, they are handmade. Rather than being frustrated by not having a perfect piano, I embraced the flaws." "The lockdown solo record became the artistic gesture of 2020, both in pop with Paul McCartney and in jazz, notably thanks to Fred Hersch's piano. To measure the subtlety of this pianist, you don't need to go far: listen to the first track, 'Wouldn't It Be Loverly', and you'll be won over. The last is his own rendition, to celebrate his birthday in confinement, of McCartney's 'When I'm Sixty Four'." --- Top 10 albums of 2020 by LES ECHOS ---