It should perhaps come as no surprise that the two preeminent jazz pianists of our time have both released albums based on their quarantine during the COVID19 pandemic. Brad Mehldau’s Suite: April 2020 is something of a tabula rasa of the brilliant musician’s original material upon which he tacitly encourages listeners to project their own personal experience(s). In a contrasting but no less stirring way, Fred Hersch‘s own solo piano effort arising from isolation arrives from a slightly but crucially different perspective. Comprised mostly of covers, Songs From Home constitutes a formidable gesture of empathy on his part as his choice of material represents sharing with the listeners his own reactions to restrictive circumstances.
Even as the black and white cover compels repeated perusal to fully comprehend the image, the artwork still doesn’t exactly say it all. But that’s because of the eloquence in Hersch’s piano work, the elegiac depth of which on “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” ultimately transcends that mournful atmosphere: by the time the opener’s six minutes plus concludes, the pianist has broken through to the more lighthearted attitude at which the wordplay in the title hints. This tune of composer Frederick Loewe (of Lerner and… fame) resides most comfortably next to Cole Porter’s “Get Out of Town” and Duke Ellington’s “Solitude,” literal expressions of emotion, couched in the exquisite elegance that is Fred’s most distinctive trait as a musician.
Those selections come from an era more than slightly far removed from the Sixties time-frame of Lennon/McCartney’s “When I’m Sixty Four” or Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.” Yet, in their own way, all four of which evoke a timeless quality, one this gifted musician turns into comfort pure and simple. Again, though, it’s not just Hersch’s choices, but his insightful readings that render them moving and, likewise, his probing interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want” (from her Blue album) transcends even those most poignant reminiscences; the end effect has something to do with the length of the cut–at a little over seven minutes, it’s the longest track on this near-hour duration album—but more so because the sounds this artful pianist elicits from the keyboard conjure a palpable sense of the future as well as the past.
With that approach, Fred’s doesn’t shortchange the feeling(s) at the root of the other songs, but only explores the proportionately deeper and more numerous shades of nuance. His own composition “Sarabande” works that way in Songs From Home‘s most pure and direct expression of feeling. That is, probably not so surprising, but the traditional “The Water Is Wide” quite remarkably serves a similar purpose perhaps by the very burnished vintage Fred Hersch evokes, in effect placing our contemporary time(s) in the context of a larger history. That achievement may in fact be the greatest of the artist’s accomplishments here, if only because this multi-faceted burst of inspiration—which arose from a two-month-long series of Facebook performances—posits solitude as a potential source of refuge and comfort on its own terms, as much (or more than) a practical necessity under extreme circumstances.
With it, a seemingly endless string of notes ringing clear, even when stuck with utmost delicacy on Kenny Wheeler’s “Consolation (A Folk Song),” Songs From Home (on Palmetto Records) is a world unto itself, one this stellar jazz figure consciously created to mirror his recent existence and, by extension, our own. Further corresponding to the digipak design, this album is thus a bridge by which we can liberate ourselves from trying times, as no doubt this great musician did in conceiving and executing the project.
