Fred Hersch and Donny McCaslin at Smoke Jazz Club

Fred Hersch with Donny McCaslin
Smoke Jazz and Supper Club
New York City
March 14, 2025

The pairing of pianist Fred Hersch and saxophonist Donny McCaslin at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club was a dazzling demonstration of musical chemistry—a duo performance that far exceeded the sum of its parts.

Both players listened closely and built solos architecturally, yet with careful economy. Their riveting duets, mostly on standards, felt almost composed, so tightly bound was their playing.

And all this at a one-night engagement that—as Hersch said in a brief interview after the set—was his first appearance with McCaslin since 2017. When players are this aligned artistically, it seems, they needn't play together often to forge a powerful musical connection each time they do.

McCaslin was one of two guest saxophonists (Miguel Zenon played the next night) who appeared after several nights of solo piano—which were Hersch's first appearances at the uptown club. The first 25 minutes or so of Friday's set featured the pianist alone at a huge concert D grand piano, the biggest of the Steinways.

Though he's recorded in every configuration imaginable, solo piano dominates Hersch's discography (he's made 13 lone recordings), and his ease in the format was immediately apparent. Two ballads from outside the jazz songbook were played touchingly and with exquisite restraint—"Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from "My Fair Lady" and Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." For each, Hersch took an unadorned run through the familiar melody, followed by variations based on the song's chordal structure that were only slightly jazzy; they never strayed too far from the theme or lost the serene mood.

The tempo—and the musical edge—rose during his more up-tempo solo pieces, including a "Caravan" that was imbued with a slightly off-kilter rhythmic feel. Then McCaslin joined in and their joined-at-the-hip chemistry began instantly.

After a piano-only introduction to their opener, "Con Alma," Hersch began playing in near-stuttering patterns as McCaslin entered, and the tenor player was soon sustaining fluttering strings of notes that echoed the piano, until the roles reversed and Hersch fell in line behind the herky-jerky cadence of the horn solo. This was a musical conversation of the highest order, elegant but never buttoned down or predictable.

In a set dominated by standards—from Gershwin to Monk—the highlight happened to be an unreleased Hersch original, "Anticipation," which speaks both to the pianist's compositional chops and his partner's instant adaptability to a piece he must have just learned.

After the two played the jaunty melody together, McCaslin embarked on a four-minute solo that ebbed and flowed in intensity and employed an ever-changing repertoire of techniques and note lengths—from slow smears to fast spiraling fusillades. It was a tour-de-force display that justified Hersch's introduction of McCaslin as "one of the best saxophonists on the planet" and made clear why the tenorist has three times been Grammy-nominated for the best improvised jazz solo (with two of those nods coming from his recordings with Maria Schneider).

Hersch now heads into a busy spring, including album launches at Joe's Pub, for Suspended in Time—A Song Cycle (Resilience Music Alliance, 2025) and at the Village Vanguard, for an ECM Records trio recording that includes "Anticipation." McCaslin has early April dates at Birdland Jazz Club with his own band. It's unclear if and when the two will reunite, but the memory of this deeply musical one-night encounter should endure until they do.