Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening (2024)

Posted By: delpotro

Date: Sept. 16, 2024

Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM’s distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, including Billy Strayhorn’s “Star-Crossed Lovers”, Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”, Alec Wilder’s “Winter Of My Discontent” and Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefulness for which Hersch is renowned. Developed with producer Manfred Eicher in the responsive acoustics of the Lugano studio, the album was recorded in May 2023.

Allmusic Review by Matt Collar
Pianist Fred Hersch spotlights his poetic, harmonically nuanced solo piano work on 2024's Silent, Listening. The album is Hersch's second for the storied ECM label, following his 2022 duet collaboration with trumpeter Enrico Rava, The Song Is You. Produced by Manfred Eicher in Lugano, Switzerland's Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, the same concert hall where they recorded with Rava, Silent, Listening features a mix of delicately rendered standards alongside a handful of the pianist's originals. While Hersch is more closely associated with his straight-ahead interpretations of classic American Songbook standards, here he displays just how painterly and surprisingly avant-garde his tastes lean. There's a sense on Silent, Listening that Hersch is composing in the moment, balancing the artful melodicism he is known for with sustained moments of freely improvised flights of fancy. Several of this own compositions have titles inspired by the work of painter Robert Rauschenberg, including "Volon" and "Aeon." Those, along with evocatively titled songs like "Night Tide Light," have a modern classical feeling, marked by long, languid phrases and shadowy dissonance. There's also "Little Song," a lilting, dancerly piece he originally wrote for Rava and which he presents here for the first time. All of these conjure an evocative vibe, like Ahmad Jamal in deep, improvisational reflection with Claude Debussy, and one he carries through to the standards. Here, he sinks into a lovelorn rendition of Billy Strayhorn's "Star-Crossed Lovers" and illuminates the moon-dappled classical influences at the core of Russ Freeman's "The Wind" and Alec Wilder's "Winter of My Discontent."

Tracklist:
01 - Star-Crossed Lovers
02 - Night Tide Light
03 - Akrasia
04 - Silent, Listening
05 - Starlight
06 - Aeon
07 - Little Song
08 - The Wind
09 - Volon
10 - Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise
11 - Winter of my Discontent

XLD

X Lossless Decoder version 20240511 (157.1)

XLD extraction logfile from 2024-09-14 15:22:22 -0700

Fred Hersch / Silent, Listening

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