Fred Hersch
Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn (Nonesuch 79395)

One of the most distinguished pianists of the day, Fred Hersch here delivers a very beautiful album of Billy Strayhorn compositions, mostly lesser known tunes, but several standards as well ("Lush Life," "Something to Live For," "Passion Flower").

The whole thing is pretty damn immaculate, which is actually my complaint with it, because even though Hersch's interpretations are interesting and captivating, the disc as a whole is a bit too sophisticated for my ears, a bit too much in the "over 40" demographic.

Extremely tasteful, elegant, delicate, personal, and intelligent – all very good attributes, and the CD is certainly recommended. But the ultimate criteria of "how much will you actually listen to it" marks Passion Flower as a back-burner disc: one that deserves a place on your shopping list or your "I'd like to hear that sometime" list, but not one that you necessarily need to go out and buy right this moment. Then again, at the moment, I am listening to Dolly Parton, so where's my credibility?

A couple tracks are done solo, in Hersch's romantic style, which is much like Bill Evans's, though perhaps a bit more unabashedly pretty. Hersch, I think, has actually found a pretty unique voice despite some apparent influences (Evans, Monk, Tatum). He's one of the most sensitive musicians you'll ever hear, and consistently puts out discs (like this one) that are wonderful in various ways but not as they say "classic."

He's a traditionalist, yet he's not doing a watered-down version of what has come before – rather, he's using the past as a foundation on which to build some very nice music. The Strayhorn album is great because it allows for more of Hersch's style to come through than his Monk and Evans tribute discs do – though admittedly you have to be a pretty decent connoisseur of jazz history to get as much out of this disc as was clearly put into it.

Strayhorn remains one of the great unheralded composers (he wrote "Satin Doll" and "Take the A Train," both of which generally get attributed to Ellington), but he created songs that were somewhere between pop standards and art songs – not a bad thing, of course, but not always the most directly accessible material.

Hersch really concentrates on the beautiful moments of Strayhorn's output, letting each song unfold like a flower (intentional), unifying the program with a floral theme ("Lotus Blossom," "Lament for an Orchid," "Ballad for Very Tired and Very Sad Lotus-Eaters," "Passion Flower").

The majority of the disc features a trio, sometimes augmented by an orchestra (conducted by Nonesuch mainstay Eric Stern, who has also done good work on Dawn Upshaw and Audra McDonald albums), and Andy Bey weighs in with the disc's sole vocal ("Something to Live For"). As I said earlier, all this is extraordinarily pretty and well done, but just a bit, well, backgroundy.

Give me another ten or fifteen years, and I'll probably love this sort of thing. In the meantime, I'll stick with stuff that really grabs hold and shakes you the hell around. ("Dolly Parton grabs hold of you and shakes you the hell around?" you ask confusedly. I just stare back, equally confusedly.)

Perfect disc to check out of a library, or if you happen to find it used for like three or four bucks.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Vonda File-Cabinet