Fred Hersch - The Surrounding Green

We’re only halfway through 2025 and ECM has already produced some stellar albums this year. Julia Hülsmann's Under The Surface back in January was shortly followed by Billy Hart’s Just, and Anouar Brahem’s After The Last Sky has been one of the most popular albums with Presto jazz listeners so far. So, continuing in the same spirit, ECM brings us the new trio album from pianist Fred Hersch in The Surrounding Green – and there’s all the signs that this album could join the club too. 

Not far off his seventieth birthday, Hersch has a whole career’s worth of listeners, awards, and accolades behind him. With seventeen Grammy nominations, over fifty albums as a leader or co-leader, and his quintessential lyrical and contemplative style of playing, the most surprising thing might be that it took until 2022 for Hersch to release his first ECM album. Beginning with his label debut The Song Is You, Hersch delivered a duet album with trumpeter Enrico Rava, and his consequential follow up Silent, Listening was a solo piano album. Flash forward to today and this latest instalment sees Hersch treading new ground with the label, and yet he also comes home full circle. 

The Surrounding Green is Hersch’s first trio album with ECM, and yet the ensemble consists of players that have performed within the Fred Hersch Trio for years. With Joey Baron on drums and Drew Gress on bass, this trio plays with the assured confidence and collective insight that comes from making music repeatedly together over time. Across the collection of originals and twentieth-century standards that make up the album, there’s no faltering in the sound or the sense that the players are working hard to try and get on the same page. This well-seasoned ensemble is a safe pair of hands.

‘Plainsong’ opens The Surrounding Green, a Hersch original that’s as melancholic as it is melodic, with atmospheric accompaniment from Gress and Baron. The title track emphasises Baron’s soft cymbal work, underpinning Hersch’s piano that climbs and falls in delicate crests, and the energy that propels the following track ‘Palhaço’ by Egberto Gismonti was certainly a highlight for me. Another thing I liked about this album was Hersch’s refusal to keep firmly in a meditative and melancholic mood – Gershwin’s ‘Embraceable You’, though relaxed and laid back, still swings with some driving toms and pulsing bass from Gress, and ‘Anticipation’ closes the album with a latin groove that definitely ends the album on the up. 

Far beyond the days of proving himself, Hersch still nonetheless demonstrates just why he’s considered a first-class pianist, and The Surrounding Green is filled with that effortless and subtle ensemble interplay that has always made the trio album such a compelling listen. Another one for the 2025 ECM collection.