Feebles, Fables & Ferns Mick Goodrick & Fred Hersch

• 1 Feebles, Fables & Ferns 05:06
• 2 Falling Grace 04:05
• 3 Away 10 / Amazing 06:13
• 4 Five Excursions 09:14
• 5 Out of Nowhere 04:02
• 6 Heartsong 04:49
• 7 Soul Eyes 05:27
• Total Runtime 38:56

Info for Feebles, Fables & Ferns

Feebles, Fables and Ferns captures a rare one-time coming together of luminaries Mick Goodrick and Fred Hersch, both active in Boston at the time, recorded in Hersch’s studio in New York, in August 1988. Looking back at the session almost four decades later, Hersch notes how “the highlight to me is just the level of ensemble playing. There was a lot of profound listening going on between the both of us.” The expansive grasp of both musicians’ language and expressive abilities on their respective instruments is to the fore throughout this rich programme. “Mick was a pretty modest guy. And he was very under-recorded,” Fred remembers. “I call him the guitar whisperer; He was very content to teach, be behind the scenes. That was kind of his way of doing things. And towards the end of the era of my recording studio, which was ca. 1983-88, I asked him to come down and record some duets with me. So he came to NYC and we made this duo thing and it just worked out on the spot.”

Goodrick was neither a very prolific composer nor did he record abundantly throughout his life, making each entry to his discography a rare window into his craft, and here his pioneering approach to guitar improvisation, which was influential to everyone from Lionel Loueke to Wolfgang Muthspiel and Julian Lage, is on full display. Lage, who studied under Goodrick, has noted how the guitarist “had an extraordinary way of unpacking problems by listening attentively and then offering organic and often surprising solutions. There was no limit to what he wanted to share.” Hersch and Goodrick’s intimate dialogues lay bare the qualities that have earned both men a reputation as leading mentors in improvisation. Previously known compositions by the pianist and the guitarist appear in concentrated guises, with Goodrick’s album-title-lending “Feebles, Fables and Ferns” (recorded for his ECM date In Pas(s)ing ten years earlier) offering a focused glimpse at the playfully intertwined lines the two spin around each other on the go.

"Feeling a little like a beautifully preserved sketchbook, this recording exudes grace and charm. For admirers of either artist, Feebles, Fables and Ferns is an invaluable archival release. More importantly, it stands as a touching document of musical empathy, capturing two improvisers whose shared sensitivity mattered greatly." (Mike Gates, ukvibe.org)

Mick Goodrick, guitar
Fred Hersch, piano

Recorded August 1988, Classic Sound Studio, NYC

Please note: we do not offer the 88.2kHz version. Our spectrum analysis did not reach the required frequency range. Fundamentally, we offer 44.1kHz.

Mick Goodrick
is somebody who really had an effect on me. At the time I was playing in Gary Burton's band, he was the other guitar player, and he played with such incredible depth. There is a kind of awareness in the way he listens, both as a musician and as a person who invites engagement and communication.“ – Pat Metheny

Mick Goodrick (1945-2022), hailed during his lifetime as “technically among the finest players around” by Downbeat magazine and called “an inconspicuous guru of jazz guitar” by WRTI’s David R. Adler, was a sought-after performer, composer and educator who profoundly impacted several generations of guitarists around the world. Known for his special attention to chord structures and harmonic control, Mick always put a special emphasis on accompaniment in his teaching:

“For the most part, I think I got hired because of my comping,” he has said. “And that’s one of the things I still encourage of my students. If you can make someone sound good, maybe they’ll hire you again. The person who is comping has the best job. That person is really the head of the rhythm section, the liaison between bass and drums and the soloist. Plus we also get to solo.”

He first came to ECM as part of Gary Burton’s groups, joining the vibraphonist on his albums Ring (1974), Dreams So Real (1975) and Easy As Pie (1981). On the seminal Dreams So Real, the guitarist and Burton play the music of Carla Bley with Steve Swallow and Bob Moses as the rhythm section, as well as Pat Metheny on second guitar. At the time of its release, Melody Maker raved, “outside of his trail-blazing 1967 quartet, it’s the strongest line-up Burton has ever fronted,” also noting “its subtle strengths and sense of swing”.

In Pas(s)ing, his only leader-date for the label, saw him collaborate with saxophonist John Surman, Eddie Gomez on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. In its retrospective review of the album, Jazzwise observed how “this 1978 ECM session with an A-list quartet already indicates how provocative his accompaniments were and how inventively he folds solo lines into oddball chords,“ calling the album “a one-off US/UK post-bop session of real character”.

Goodrick also appears on Charlie Haden’s Ballad Of The Fallen (1983), and with Steve Swallow’s ensembles on Deconstructed (1997) and Always Pack Your Uniform (2000), the latter of which were released on the XtraWatt label.

Nobody has confronted this instrument as fearlessly and doggedly as Mick – Steve Swallow

Fred Hersch
A member of jazz’s piano pantheon, Fred Hersch has been an influential creative force over more than three decades as an improviser, composer, educator, bandleader, collaborator, and recording artist. He has been proclaimed “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade” by Vanity Fair and “a living legend” by The New Yorker. A seventeen-time Grammy nominee, Hersch has garnered jazz’s most prestigious awards, including a Doris Duke Artist (2016), Jazz Pianist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association (2011, 2016, 2018), and the Jazz Magazine (France) International Artist of the Year (2021). The Fred Hersch Trio was voted the #1 Jazz Group in the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll.

An acclaimed and influential solo pianist, he has twelve solo recordings in his catalog including the 2024 release, Silent, Listening which is a collaboration with legendary producer Manfred Eicher for the ECM label. All About Jazz has remarked that “when it comes to the art of solo piano in jazz, there are two classes of performers: Fred Hersch and everybody else” and The New York Times simply calls him “a master who plays it his way”.

Through more than twelve albums, the Fred Hersch Triohas remained at the pinnacle of modern jazz, venerated as the epitome of thrilling interplay and dynamic spontaneity. The Wall Street Journal calls the trio “one of the major ensembles of our time,” while The New Yorker has applauded it for playing with “high lyricism and high danger.” They were named the #1 Jazz Group of the Year by DownBeat magazine. and appeared at major jazz festivals throughout Europe and the US and have regularly headlined at the legendary Village Vanguard since 1997. His next trio album for ECM Records, The Surrounding Green with Drew Gress and Joey Baron, will be released in June of 2025.

Hersch has more than sixty albums to his credit as leader or co-leader. His 2022 Breath By Breath features him playing his own compositions inspired by his insight meditation practice with his trio and with the Crosby Street String Quartet. A 2022 duo project with Italian trumpet maestro Enrico Rava, The Song Is You (ECM), was followed by the 2023 release of Alive at the Village Vanguard, a duo with dazzling jazz vocalist esperanza spalding that was named a 2023 Top Ten Jazz Album by DownBeat and was nominated for two 2024 Grammy Awards. His last album with his long-standing trio, 2018’s Live in Europe (Palmetto), documents one remarkable evening in Brussels and has been hailed as its best to date.

An exceptionally responsive and intuitive collaborator, Hersch has engaged in duo partnerships with a number of spirited artists, including clarinetist Anat Cohen; guitarists Bill Frisell, Gilad Hekselman and Julian Lage; saxophonists Chris Potter, Joe Lovano and Miguel Zenon; trumpeters Avishai Cohen and Enrico Rava; and vocalists Kurt Elling, esperanza spalding, Kate McGarry, Audra McDonald, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Renée Fleming. His many sideman credits include Joe Henderson, Art Farmer, Stan Getz, Charlie Haden, Toots Thielemans and other jazz legends.

Hersch’s memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly (Crown Archetype), compellingly reveals the story of his life in music along with a frank recounting of his health struggles and triumphs as the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz musician. The book was named one of 2017’s Five Best Memoirs by the Washington Post and the New York Times, and acclaimed as 2018’s Book on Jazz of the Year by the JJA. His story has also been told in a feature documentary by filmmakers Carrie Lozano and Charlotte Lagarde, The Ballad of Fred Hersch, which premiered to a sold-out house at the Full Frame Film Festival in 2016 and is now streaming. His acclaimed jazz/theater piece My Coma Dreams, created with librettist/director Herschel Garfein for actor/singer, eleven musicians and immersive video, premiered in 2011 and is also available online.

While widely renowned for his playing, Hersch has earned similar distinction with his composing, garnering a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, among other awards. His large-scale setting of Walt Whitman’s poetry for two voices and instrumental octet, Leaves of Grass, was selected to open the 2017 Jazz at Lincoln Center season at the Appel Room. He has received commissions from Roomful of Teeth, Igor Levit, the Lucerne Festival, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Doris Duke Millennium Fund, and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival. He has been awarded ten composition residencies at MacDowell and one at Bellagio.

HIV-positive for almost four decades, Hersch has been a passionate spokesman and fundraiser for AIDS services and education agencies. He has produced and performed on four benefit recordings and in numerous concerts for charities; to date, his efforts have raised more than $300,000. He has also been a keynote speaker and performer at international medical conferences in the U.S. and Europe. In 2020 he raised $50,000 for the Jazz Foundation of America with a live duo EP with vocalist esperanza spalding and Eight x 88, a streaming event featuring eight of New York’s greatest jazz pianists in solo and duo formats.

A committed educator, Hersch has taught at New England Conservatory, the Juilliard School, the New School, Rutgers University and the Manhattan School of Music and has given master classes around the world. Hersch’s influence has been widely felt on a new generation of jazz pianists, from former students Brad Mehldau, Sullivan Fortner, Dan Tepfer and Ethan Iverson to his friend and piano colleague Jason Moran, who has said, “Fred at the piano is like LeBron James on the basketball court. He’s perfection.”

Booklet for Feebles, Fables & Ferns