Welcome to our 2023-2024 season!
Fred Hersch, Piano
Responding to Illness Through Jazz
Princeton University Concerts Debut
When
Thursday, February 9, 2023, 7:30 PM EST
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Where
Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall
Tickets
General: $40 | Student: $10. Ticketing & COVID-19 Policies>
While standard floor seating is sold out, balcony seating has been added due to popular demand. Online sales have now closed. Tickets can be purchased at the hall starting at 6:45PM.
The Will Call desk will also open at 6:45PM.
You may also be interested in seeing Fred Hersch at the Princeton Garden Theatre and free Live Music Meditation.
the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade”
—Vanity Fair
Healing with Music
About the Event
“A living legend” (The New Yorker) within jazz’s piano pantheon, fifteen-time GRAMMY nominee Fred Hersch was also one of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz musicians. Amidst the demands of an internationally celebrated career, he spent several months in an AIDS-related coma in 2008. And yet, as he shared in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air:”
“Certainly since the coma … there seems to be more relaxation, maybe more depth, more direct connection to what I’m playing. I realized when I was that far down that I really wasn’t done yet. There was more that I had to do as a musician, as a partner.”
He makes his Princeton University Concerts debut, as part of our new Healing with Music series, to discuss this profound relationship to music and share “Breath by Breath”—a suite of nine original compositions written during the pandemic, inspired by his longtime practice of mindfulness meditation. Through this combination of performance and conversation with the audience, we will come together to breathe in the life-affirming power of music, guided by an endlessly-inspiring musician who is a living testament to music’s ability to heal.
ABOUT THE HEALING WITH MUSIC SERIES
Humans have been using sounds as a way to exist and endure since the start of time. As we return to the concert hall after the trauma of a pandemic, we will be guided by three artists whose stories of resilience in facing illness and personal upheaval shed light on music’s profound impact in events combining conversation and live performance.
Read More About Event
Musicians
Fred Hersch Piano
Drew Gress Bass
Jochen Rückert Drums
Crosby Street String Quartet
“A living legend” (The New Yorker) within jazz’s piano pantheon, fifteen-time GRAMMY nominee Fred Hersch was also one of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz musicians. Amidst the demands of an internationally celebrated career, he spent several months in an AIDS-related coma in 2008. And yet, as he shared in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air:”
“Certainly since the coma … there seems to be more relaxation, maybe more depth, more direct connection to what I’m playing. I realized when I was that far down that I really wasn’t done yet. There was more that I had to do as a musician, as a partner.”
He makes his Princeton University Concerts debut, as part of our new Healing with Music series, to discuss this profound relationship to music and share “Breath by Breath”—a suite of nine original compositions written during the pandemic, inspired by his longtime practice of mindfulness meditation. Through this combination of performance and conversation with the audience, we will come together to breathe in the life-affirming power of music, guided by an endlessly-inspiring musician who is a living testament to music’s ability to heal.
ABOUT THE HEALING WITH MUSIC SERIES
Humans have been using sounds as a way to exist and endure since the start of time. As we return to the concert hall after the trauma of a pandemic, we will be guided by three artists whose stories of resilience in facing illness and personal upheaval shed light on music’s profound impact in events combining conversation and live performance.
Musicians
Fred Hersch Piano
Drew Gress Bass
Jochen Rückert Drums
Crosby Street String Quartet
Program
- Fred Hersch
“Breath by Breath”
no Sati Suite
Pastorale
Valentine
Heartsong
