March 10-16, 2005

musicpicks

Fred Hersch

jazz

Setting Walt Whitman's nonrhythmic, improvisational free verse to music is no easy task, but composer/pianist Fred Hersch has sufficiently fertile imagination to tackle it. Hersch fortunately chooses to interpret rather than revere the material, cutting and transposing lines at will, but then takes the text as guide in his shifting, elusory rhythmic approach. The result is refreshingly nonidiomatic, a jazz oratorio too intricately composed to be strictly jazz yet too constantly adaptive for the strictures of classical. For the recording and tour, Hersch has assembled a superb ensemble of young jazz talent, many of them leaders in their own right, who share Hersch's ability to suffuse the work with a sense of personality and surprise despite the relative lack of space for traditional soloing. Vocalists Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry glide from straight readings to intimate crooning to light-opera emoting with supple grace. An exhilarating achievement.

Leaves of Grass, Sat., March 12, 7:30 p.m., $38-$43, Kimmel Center, 300 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999.

—Shaun Brady