Fred Hersch, one of the top handful of jazz pianists on the scene, spent several months in a coma last year, owing to complications from HIV, with which he’s been living for well over a decade. When he emerged, he had to teach himself how to play piano all over again—not the technique, but the reflexes, the timing, the coordination—but you wouldn’t know it from Whirl (on the Palmetto label), his first album since the return.
It doesn’t have quite the fluency or exuberance of Let Yourself Go or In Amsterdam, my two favorite Hersch albums (both recorded live, in 1998 and 2003, respectively), but Whirl is a lovely and riveting piece of work all the same.
His phrases are shorter, sometimes a bit more clipped, than in the past, but he still has his fleet touch, and his deep, if subtle, swing, which string the phrases together in a seamless stream. He navigates a knotty Paul Motian tune, “Blue Midnight,” with aplomb, and tackles his late mentor Jaki Byard’s boppish “Mrs. Parker of K.C.,” with wit and energy.
As usual, he shines most richly with the romantic ballads, especially in this case two originals, “Snow Is Falling” and “Still Here,” the latter an elegiac piece that he wrote for Wayne Shorter but that resonates more shiveringly since, clearly, it’s also become a song about Hersch himself.
James Farber recorded and mixed the disc, so the sound is, as usual, very good: the piano percussive and liquid, the bass plucky and tuneful, the drums a little bit compressed but sizzly (in a good way) and deep on the soundstage.
