Princeton University Music Department

Princeton University Concerts

Before experiencing pianist Fred Hersch in concert and conversation as part of Princeton University Concerts’ new “Healing with Music” series, come to the Princeton Garden Theatre to get to know this legendary musician and exquisite human through a screening of The Ballad of Fred Hersch, the award-winning documentary by Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozano. A post-screening discussion with Fred Hersch will follow.

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.

The Ballad of Fred Hersch Film