FRED HERSCH TRIO & THE CROSBY STREET STRING QUARTET - Breath By Breath
Palmetto Records: PM 2198
Fred Hersch (piano, composer) Drew Gress (bass) Jochen Rueckert (drums) with the Crosby Street String Quartet: Joyce Hammann & Laura Seaton (violins) Lois Martin (viola) Jody Redhage Ferber (cello) and Rogerio Boccato (percussion)
Recorded at the Samurai Hotel, Astoria, New York, August 24th and 25th 2021.
Some of the greatest music ever composed has been expressed through the medium of the string quartet: four instrumentalists engaged in what can be likened to a musical conversation has parallels with the jazz quartet and although the latter opens up more opportunities for spontaneous improvisation both formats expose the sinews of the music allowing the listener to enter into a profound communion with the mind of the artist. Listening to string quartet music was a seminal experience for Fred Hersch in his student days and it has been a source of inspiration to him as composer throughout his subsequent career and in this latest release he adds strings to his familiar piano trio unit as a means of communicating his thoughts on mindfulness and as an aid to meditative reflection.
The music takes the form of an eight of pieces collectively titled `The Sati Suite` (a Buddhist word for mindfulness) plus a final track `Pastorale`, which is described as an homage to the 19th century composer Robert Schumann. Hersch invites his listeners to slow down and try to listen to the suite in its entirety to gain the desired therapeutic effect and I must say that after a couple of concentrated listens I began to warm to the music which I was initially inclined to dismiss as rather staid and anachronistic. Indeed, his writing for the strings has a distinctly `Romantic Era` feel and his piano solos often follow classically inspired fugato lines but a second hearing reveals many subtleties that might not be apparent on a first encounter.
Each tune conveys an extra musical philosophical message indicating a state of mind as exampled by titles like `Awakened Heart`, `Know What You Are` and, of course, the title track itself. Some like `Worldly Winds` and `Monkey Mind` illustrate a degree of mental turmoil through the use of percussive devices and jazzier tropes and in `Mara`, a musical picture of a seductive goddess, we are served with some Asian exoticism in the form of gamelan like percussion and episodic piano phrases that recall the spare style of the French impressionist composer, Erik Satie.
`I Know That You Are` is a short piece in which the string quartet perform without the jazz trio and it with its air of Elgarian nostalgia it is quite affectingly beautiful and a stand out track of the set though it has nothing to do with jazz or improvised music as indeed has the writing for the strings in general. This could be seen as a bit of a missed opportunity of Hersch’s part for there is only one piece in which the quartet fully integrate with the trio in a spontaneous dialogue, the aforementioned `Monkey Mind`, and here the trading of phrases comes over with a sort of tit for tat banality. This is, however a minor -even niggling – criticism for there is much here to enjoy whether or not you are in need of a dose of healing, musical balm.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
Palmetto Records: PM 2198
Fred Hersch (piano, composer) Drew Gress (bass) Jochen Rueckert (drums) with the Crosby Street String Quartet: Joyce Hammann & Laura Seaton (violins) Lois Martin (viola) Jody Redhage Ferber (cello) and Rogerio Boccato (percussion)
Recorded at the Samurai Hotel, Astoria, New York, August 24th and 25th 2021.
Some of the greatest music ever composed has been expressed through the medium of the string quartet: four instrumentalists engaged in what can be likened to a musical conversation has parallels with the jazz quartet and although the latter opens up more opportunities for spontaneous improvisation both formats expose the sinews of the music allowing the listener to enter into a profound communion with the mind of the artist. Listening to string quartet music was a seminal experience for Fred Hersch in his student days and it has been a source of inspiration to him as composer throughout his subsequent career and in this latest release he adds strings to his familiar piano trio unit as a means of communicating his thoughts on mindfulness and as an aid to meditative reflection.
The music takes the form of an eight of pieces collectively titled `The Sati Suite` (a Buddhist word for mindfulness) plus a final track `Pastorale`, which is described as an homage to the 19th century composer Robert Schumann. Hersch invites his listeners to slow down and try to listen to the suite in its entirety to gain the desired therapeutic effect and I must say that after a couple of concentrated listens I began to warm to the music which I was initially inclined to dismiss as rather staid and anachronistic. Indeed, his writing for the strings has a distinctly `Romantic Era` feel and his piano solos often follow classically inspired fugato lines but a second hearing reveals many subtleties that might not be apparent on a first encounter.
Each tune conveys an extra musical philosophical message indicating a state of mind as exampled by titles like `Awakened Heart`, `Know What You Are` and, of course, the title track itself. Some like `Worldly Winds` and `Monkey Mind` illustrate a degree of mental turmoil through the use of percussive devices and jazzier tropes and in `Mara`, a musical picture of a seductive goddess, we are served with some Asian exoticism in the form of gamelan like percussion and episodic piano phrases that recall the spare style of the French impressionist composer, Erik Satie.
`I Know That You Are` is a short piece in which the string quartet perform without the jazz trio and it with its air of Elgarian nostalgia it is quite affectingly beautiful and a stand out track of the set though it has nothing to do with jazz or improvised music as indeed has the writing for the strings in general. This could be seen as a bit of a missed opportunity of Hersch’s part for there is only one piece in which the quartet fully integrate with the trio in a spontaneous dialogue, the aforementioned `Monkey Mind`, and here the trading of phrases comes over with a sort of tit for tat banality. This is, however a minor -even niggling – criticism for there is much here to enjoy whether or not you are in need of a dose of healing, musical balm.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
