2020 has been a year when many musicians, deprived of live performances during the pandemic, were forced back to the woodshed to work on their skills and play with ideas. Although a lot of quarantine music has surfaced on one platform or another, the CD Songs from Home stands as especially endearing.
While ensconced in his rural Pennsylvania home, jazz piano veteran Fred Hersch sat alone at his Steinway and recorded 11 of his favorite songs. His renditions are gently melancholy and quietly insistent that the human spirit can shine even in isolation. Hersch pages through the Great American Songbook (Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” is aptly chosen) and demonstrates Jimmy Webb’s melodic gifts on “Wichita Lineman.” The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” concludes Songs from Home on a jolly note. Hersch recently passed that mark, reaching 65.
