Pianist Fred Hersch brings verve to Whitman’s verse with ‘Leaves of Grass’ Hersch brings verve to Whitman’s verse - Music

Fred Hersch first read the earthy transcendentalist verse of Walt Whitman as an undergraduate at New England Conservatory in the mid-1970s, an encounter that made an indelible impression on the rapidly blossoming jazz pianist. But it wasn’t until some two decades later in the midst of a French tour that he inexplicably found himself drawn again to Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”