A member of jazz’s piano pantheon, Fred Hersch has been an influential creative force over more than three decades as an improviser, composer, educator, bandleader, collaborator, and recording artist. He has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair and “a living legend” by The New Yorker. A seventeen-time Grammy nominee, Hersch has garnered jazz’s most prestigious awards, including a Doris Duke Artist (2016), Jazz Pianist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association (2011, 2016, 2018), and the Jazz Magazine (France) International Artist of the Year (2021). The Fred Hersch Trio was voted the #1 Jazz Group in the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll.

An acclaimed and influential solo pianist, he has twelve solo recordings in his catalog including the 2024 release, Silent, Listening which is a collaboration with legendary producer Manfred Eicher for the ECM label. All About Jazz has remarked that “when it comes to the art of solo piano in jazz, there are two classes of performers: Fred Hersch and everybody else” and The New York Times simply calls him “a master who plays it his way.”