The Sunday Times Magazine featured a rather definitive profile (4,500 words!) of jazz composer/pianist Fred Hersch. Writer David Hadjdu (author of the Billy Strayhorn biography “Lush Life”) calls Fred’s music, “luxurious, free-flowing, unashamedly gorgeous” and shows how it’s beauty has been out of step with the traditionalist currents of jazz but also prophetic of a new trend just arriving. The story chronicles Fred’s coming out as gay and as HIV positive and gives some painful detail about recent, grave illnesses including a two-month long coma last year. Hersch tells him, “I’ve been through a lot, and I want to make something of it, musically.”
