Fred  Hersch

Princeton University Concerts

Get to know legendary pianist Fred Hersch—making his PUC debut on our new “Healing with Music” series—through a screening of the award-winning documentary about his life by Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozano. A post-screening discussion with Fred Hersch will follow, moderated by his student, PUC alumnus and local composer/pianist Gregg Kallor.
The Ballad of Fred Hersch is an intimate portrait of one of today’s foremost jazz pianists. With more than 30 albums and 15 Grammy nominations, Hersch is internationally revered in jazz circles as a master improviser. A maverick in music and in life, he was the first jazz musician to come out as gay and HIV-positive in the early 1990s, and he miraculously survived a two-month coma in 2008. Both exacting and full of love, this documentary captures Hersch’s creative process as he does double duty as a workaday jazzman and first-time theater producer—turning his tragedies into triumphal art.