Mick Goodrick & Fred Hersch: Feebles, Fables And Ferns

"Feebles, Fables and Ferns" documents a rare, one-off meeting between the two greats Mick Goodrick and Fred Hersch, who were both working in Boston at the time, recorded in August 1988 in Hersch's studio in New York. Looking back on this session in 2025, Hersch remarks: "The special thing about it for me is simply the level of playing together. There was an intense mutual listening between the two of us." The comprehensive understanding of the musical language of both musicians and their expressive power on their respective instruments are always at the forefront of this rich program. Their intimate dialogues reveal the qualities that have earned both men reputations as influential mentors of improvisation. Well-known compositions by the pianist and the guitarist appear here in concentrated form, with Goodrick's "Feebles, Fables and Ferns" (recorded for his ECM album "In Pas(s)ing" ten years earlier), which gives the album its title, offering a focused insight into the playfully interwoven lines that the two spontaneously weave around each other. Hersch's "Heartsong", probably one of the pianist's most harmonically captivating original compositions, is a lyrical highlight in which the theme moves seamlessly back and forth between the two instruments. The original compositions are joined by inspired interpretations of two Steve Wallow compositions ("Falling Grace" & "Amazing"), Grant Green's "Out Of Nowhere", "Soul Eyes" by Mal Waldron and a series of spontaneous improvisations that follow one another in "Five Excursions".