Pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been called a "pianist, composer, and conceptualist of rare imaginative power" by The New York Times and has earned a place among the foremost jazz artists in the world today. He is widely recognized for his ability to create a unique body of original works while reinventing the standard jazz repertoire – investing time-tested classics with keen insight, fresh ideas, and extraordinary technique. Hersch's numerous accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, nine residencies at MacDowell, a fellowship at Bellagio and 15 Grammy nominations -- including two for best instrumental composition. He has appeared on more than 100 recordings, including more than three-dozen albums as bandleader/solo pianist.
Hersch's career as a performer has been greatly enhanced by his composing activities, a vital part of nearly all of his live concerts and recordings. His concert music is published by Edition Peters and he has received numerous commissions from a wide variety of artists, including the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, The Opus 21 Ensemble, The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and others. He created Leaves of Grass, a large-scale setting of Walt Whitman's poetry for two voices and an instrumental octet; and his 2011 extended composition My Coma Dreams, a 2011 jazz/theater piece for actor/singer, large ensemble and animation/multimedia that was commissioned by Peak Performances at Montclair State University and has been performed in Berlin, San Francisco, and New York. His memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz, was released in 2017 from Random House/Crown Archetype Books; it was named One of 2017's Best Memoirs by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
During his 2019 residency, he composed music for his jazz trio based on his experiences as a Buddhist meditator in the vipassana tradition. He sketched a large-scale piece for concert pianist Igor Levit for a September, 2021 premiere in Carnegie Hall. He has been nominated for a 2020 Grammy award in the category of Best Instrumental Composition for his piece "Begin Again" which was composed at MacDowell in 2017. This is his 15th nomination. His trio was named Best Jazz Group in the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll. He was named a Doris Duke Artist in 2016.
