Fred Hersch is a living jazz legend and HIV activist. He will be appearing at
Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge on Sunday, June 6 and Monday, June 7. MileHighGayGuy.com had the opportunity recently to talk to him about his music, being openly gay and HIV-positive in the music world, his first Pride parade, and what audiences can expect from his upcoming Denver appearances.
MileHighGayGuy: Why is jazz music the best music in the world?
Fred Hersch: Well, I don’t always think jazz is the best music in the world. There’s a lot of music I like equally. For me, jazz music is a good way to express myself spontaneously as an improviser. It’s a great musical language to play with other people and 95 percent of it is improvised so it’s different every time you play a piece. But there is a lot of other music I feel equally strong about. I like music from different parts of the world, some popular music, some classical music, so I wouldn’t say it’s the best I think it’s a really great language and it suits me personally very well. It’s something that I feel I’ve gotten to be good at and it has remained interesting to me. I’ve been doing it professionally for 35 years and I’m still interested in doing it.
How did you first become interested in or involved with jazz?
I always improvised music from childhood and I was in my high school band in Cincinnati where I started learning pop tunes and chord symbols. Then I went away to a liberal arts school and when I was there I heard a lot of real jazz and was around people who knew about it. I came to be under the tutelage of some of the older musicians and I ended up dropping out of school and playing music professionally pretty quickly. I kind of learned it by doing it. I came into it in a pretty organic way, predisposed to improvisation, and then hanging out with these interesting people who embraced me and that’s kind of just how it went.
Who are some of your jazz favorites or influences?
Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Earl Hines, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, Charles Mingus. Thelonius Monk, of course. They are all really big influences on me indifferent ways. Miles Davis. I’m a very broad listener so I study the whole history of the music but these are the people who are big inspirations for me.
Do you prefer composing or performing?
I enjoy composing a lot. I’m working on a piece called “My Coma Dreams’ based on some dreams and nightmares I had when I was in a coma in the summer of 2008 for two months. These dreams kept coming to me so I’m fashioning them into a full evening piece with 11 instruments, a kind of speaker/singer/actor, animation, and multimedia to premiere next May.
I also did a large scale setting of Walt Whitman's ‘Leaves of Grass’ for an octet and two singers that was also a full evening piece. In addition to doing short form things it seems like every four or five years I bite off kind of a large ensemble project. The dream material was so compelling I just felt like I had to do something with it.
For playing, well, I play solo, I play in a trio, I have a band called Pocket Orchestra, I have a quintet, and I’ve had numerous collaborations. I really mix it up. I don’t do one thing all the time. I like to keep it interesting.
You're also known for your HIV activism. When did you find out you were HIV positive and how did that affect you?
In the mid '80s when we knew there was a disease but we really didn't know what it was, my doctor at that time just started monitoring my T-cells. He said if they went below 500 we’d take the test. My T-cells began to fall and when we got the results in 1986 or so I was not surprised. I probably contracted the disease in the early 1980s.
Of course I’ve been through periods of anxiety and had some health scares related to my HIV infection but I’ve done a lot of things – benefit concerts, benefit CDs, and I was probably the first major jazz musician to come out about my sexual orientation and HIV status - to try be some kind of role model. It’s affected me in a lot of ways, but professionally it’s sort of a non-issue since I’ve been out so long. My career continues to get better and more interesting each year so clearly it’s not had a bad effect on my career. And I feel at home in my own skin since I’ve not had to be in any kind of closet, but there certainly have been dark times. After the pneumonia I couldn’t walk, talk, eat or swallow. I weighed 105 lbs. I had to do a total rebuild of my life including getting my piano skills back and so on. I’ve had challenges but I’ve overcome all of them. I also have an amazing partner of eight and a half years who has really helped get me through a lot of this stuff that has happened to me in the last few years.
Have you ever experienced any homophobia or backlash for being openly HIV-positive in the music community?
None. There may be people who have said homophobic things about me behind my back but it’s never gotten back to me. If you have a strong musical identity there are always going to be people who don’t like what you do. And if they happen to be homophobic, that’s another reason for them not to like what you do. Particuularly after my serious illness, there was just an incredible outpouring of support and love and people were just incredible about showing support in so many ways. There was a
New York Times article written about me, a six-page feature, which is incredibly unusual for the
NYT to do on any artist and it talked about what I’d been through and so on. Clearly everybody was pulling for me and they seem very happy to see me up and playing and stronger than ever. The jazz community really does rally when one of it’s people is in trouble. I experienced that and it was beautiful.
June is Pride Month and Denver PrideFest is coming up June 19-20. What is your most memorable Pride moment?
My first Pride march was in 1978 or '79 and I was out to my friends but not to the jazz community at large. I was in the Village on Pride day and watching the parade. It was much smaller then, without the floats sponsored by vodka companies and all this absurd bullshit. It was a real statement then to march in the gay pride parade. I remember standing on the sidewalk and watching the parade go by and just deciding that I was going to get in the parade. And then a group walked by and I just stepped off the sidewalk and joined the parade. I was worried that I’d be seen but I just decided "Fuck it, I’m going to stand up and be counted." That was really my big moment. I feel like I don’t need to go to gay pride any more because I act that out every day of every year. I’m proud of being gay. It’s a part of who I am and everybody knows it. That’s my contribution year round to the idea of Pride so I don’t feel the need to celebrate in any formal way, especially as many of the pride celebrations have just gotten to be, in my opinion, stupid. They’ve lost track of what they’re really meant to be.
Well, what I’m doing at Dazzle is a duo – two pianos with my close friend Art Lande - and we’re going to be doing all kinds of things. Standard jazz, free improvisations, some of my compositions, maybe some of his. It will be unpredictable and possibly a bit theatrical. It’s a special event, not a normal thing that I do all the time, so I can’t exactly tell you but it will definitely be fun, it will definitely be interesting, and it won’t be your average jazz performance.
What message do you have for readers of MileHighGayGuy and Denver's gay community?
The word community means so many things to so many people. I’d certainly say, look guys and ladies, the HIV health crisis is not over, far from it, and there are certain legal rights we don’t have that we should have, but I think so much progress has been made as gay people have come out in music and television and the media. People are no longer scared of gay people. Everybody knows somebody who is gay. Gay people are no longer ‘the other.’ The more people come out, the more people will realize that gay people are just like everybody else. One day it will be a non-issue. It’s just the way things are. Some people are gay and some people aren’t. We all share the planet and we have to live together and we should all make the best of it.
Fred Hersch is a living jazz legend and HIV activist. He will be appearing at Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge on Sunday, June 6 and Monday, June 7. MileHighGayGuy.com had the opportunity recently to talk to him about his music, being openly gay and HIV-positive in the music world, his first Pride parade, and what audiences can expect from his upcoming Denver appearances.
Of course I’ve been through periods of anxiety and had some health scares related to my HIV infection but I’ve done a lot of things – benefit concerts, benefit CDs, and I was probably the first major jazz musician to come out about my sexual orientation and HIV status - to try be some kind of role model. It’s affected me in a lot of ways, but professionally it’s sort of a non-issue since I’ve been out so long. My career continues to get better and more interesting each year so clearly it’s not had a bad effect on my career. And I feel at home in my own skin since I’ve not had to be in any kind of closet, but there certainly have been dark times. After the pneumonia I couldn’t walk, talk, eat or swallow. I weighed 105 lbs. I had to do a total rebuild of my life including getting my piano skills back and so on. I’ve had challenges but I’ve overcome all of them. I also have an amazing partner of eight and a half years who has really helped get me through a lot of this stuff that has happened to me in the last few years.
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