David Hajdu on Fred Hersch

"[A] player too romantic for the avant-garde and far too serious for the lounges, Hersch is an artist indifferent to genre. … While the sensibility he pioneered has flourished, Hersch himself has been heard from only sporadically over the past two years. The reason is that he has, on and off during this period, been gravely ill, so sick from AIDS and a severe bout of pneumonia that the people closest to him … thought, on the worst of his many very bad days, that they had seen him for the last time. … As a result of his prolonged unconsciousness and inactivity, he lost nearly all motor function in his hands and could not hold a pencil, let alone play the piano. Today, at age 54, after many months of rehabilitation and therapy, grueling effort, effective medical care, an almost irrationally defiant refusal to accept his problems as anything less than temporary distractions from his music and a considerable amount of good luck, Hersch has achieved full recovery. Last year, he released two albums: a concert performance of his Pocket Orchestra CD, issued in the spring, and a solo piano record, 'Fred Hersch Plays Jobim,' released (to immediate acclaim) in the summer" ("Giant Steps: The Survival of a Great Jazz Pianist," New York Times, 1/31/10).