His first trio album since the '90s,
Night & the Music finds journeyman jazz pianist
Fred Hersch, along with bassist
Drew Gress and drummer
Nasheet Waits, delving into an atmospheric and intimate mix of originals and standards.
Hersch has always been a tasteful, harmonically adventurous, and deeply emotive musician, and that is certainly the case here. As he states in the liner notes, seven of these songs are first takes, and not surprisingly a sense of spontaneity and sensitive group interplay permeates the album. To these ends,
Cole Porter's "So in Love" is given a deeply expansive touch that finds
Hersch washing various harmonic colors around the melody. Similarly engaging, his takes on such lesser-played standards as
Thelonious Monk's "Boo Boo's Birthday" and
Irving Berlin's "Change Partners" are gleefully playful and adventurous. However, it is on the darker, more melancholy moments that
Hersch truly shines, and his brooding version of "How Deep Is the Ocean" and his own "Heartland" are devastatingly moving ballads.