Fred  Hersch

Drew Gress

Jochen Rückert

Princeton University Concerts

Crosby Street String Quartet

“A living legend” (The New Yorker) within jazz’s piano pantheon, fifteen-time GRAMMY nominee Fred Hersch was also one of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz musicians. Amidst the demands of an internationally celebrated career, he spent several months in an AIDS-related coma in 2008. And yet, as he shared in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air:”
He makes his Princeton University Concerts debut, as part of our new Healing with Music series, to discuss this profound relationship to music and share “Breath by Breath”—a suite of nine original compositions written during the pandemic, inspired by his longtime practice of mindfulness meditation. Through this combination of performance and conversation with the audience, we will come together to breathe in the life-affirming power of music, guided by an endlessly-inspiring musician who is a living testament to music’s ability to heal.

Fred Hersch, Piano