Breath by Breath Fred Hersch

• 1 Begin Again 06:52
• 2 Awakened Heart 04:13
• 3 Breath By Breath 06:22
• 4 Monkey Mind 04:01
• 5 Rising, Falling 05:02
• 6 Mara 04:39
• 7 Know That You Are 03:41
• 8 Worldly Winds 05:24
• 9 Pastorale 06:10
• Total Runtime 46:24

Info for Breath by Breath

Iconic pianist/composer Fred Hersch was an early adopter of new technologies and new ways forward when the pandemic hit in early 2020. But he's also been among the most eager to return to live performance and collaboration now that life has begun to resume some semblance of normality. In August 2021 he returned to the studio to record one of his most ambitious projects to date: Breath By Breath, his first album ever pairing jazz rhythm section with string quartet. Breath By Breath draws inspiration from the pianist's longtime practice of mindfulness meditation, centered on the new eight-movement "Sati Suite." But while the album is certainly contemplative and lustrous, it's far from being merely an ambient backdrop for blissful relaxation - the music here is as fully engaged and emotionally rich as any that Hersch has made over the course of his remarkable career.

"In the quest to describe the music of Fred Hersch in a word — a preposterous task, but not a pointless one — you could do a lot worse than “refinement.” Mr. Hersch is a pianist of cultivated taste and erudition; he’s also the sort of jazz musician who brings a lissome elegance to his playing, disinclined to accentuate the effort behind it all. But there’s another definition of refinement that has to do with painstaking progress, the incremental stretch toward an elusive ideal." (The New York Times)

Fred Hersch, piano
Crosby Street String Quartet
Drew Gress, bass
Jody Redhage Ferber, cello
Jochen Rueckert, drums
Rogerio Boccato, percussion (track 6)
Lois Martin, viola
Joyce Hammann, violin
Laura Seaton, violin

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