An old, valid cliché says that art imitates life, but New York City-based jazz pianist Fred Hersch’s new DVD My Coma Dreams (Palmetto) artistically goes more than one step beyond that.
The 90-minute video, filmed at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City, includes a conductor leading an 11-piece musical ensemble with Hersch, an actor playing dual roles of the pianist and his partner Scott Morgan, plus animation, video systems and lighting to evoke the subconscious bridge between life and death.
Few have traversed that perilous passage more than Hersch — a lyrical, 59-year-old Cincinnati-born pianist who studied at the renowned New England Conservatory; cut his teeth in New York playing with luminaries like Stan Getz, Art Farmer and Charlie Haden, and started a solo recording career 30 years ago that’s led to six Grammy nominations. (Hersch played Delray Beach’s Arts Garage on Oct. 17.)
A requiem for the nearly dead wasn’t supposed to be among Hersch’s noted releases. The pianist’s evocative projects such as the Bill Evans tribute Evanessence (1990), Thelonious Monk nod Thelonious (1997), his 1998 duet Songs We Know with guitarist Bill Frisell, and the 2005 ode to poet Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, had already earned him critical acclaim on a regular basis.
But Hersch had also endured an HIV diagnosis in 1986, and had wrestled with coming out as openly gay, which he did in 1992. Morgan went from being a fan to a long-term romantic interest around the turn of the century, which would prove life-affirming eight years later.
That’s when the HIV virus migrated to Hersch’s brain in early 2008, causing him to suffer from AIDS-related dementia. The pianist was hallucinating that everyone around him was conspiring against him, from Morgan (who works for the non-profit AIDS research and policy think tank the Treatment Action Group) to beloved brother Hank Hersch (assistant managing editor for Sports Illustrated magazine).
After rebounding from that, a sore throat turned into pneumonia during the summer, and Morgan had to rush Hersch to St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City in septic shock and near death. Doctors used a medically induced coma to save his life on June 10, which lasted until Aug. 7. Within those two months, the seeds for My Coma Dreams were sown.
“When Hank saw the production live, he was incredibly moved,” Hersch says by phone from his home in Manhattan. “Besides Scott, who was there for me 24/7 and incredible, Hank had been by my side through all of this more than anybody and become my rock. He said, ‘You took s— and turned it into art!’”
Documenting Hersch’s bleak summer proved artistically expensive and technically difficult enough that My Coma Dreams has only been produced live a handful of times. The show premiered on May 7-8, 2011, at Peak Performances at the Kasser Theater in Montclair, N.J., followed by Oct. 3, 2011, at Deutsche Bank Forum in Berlin (presented by the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine) and October 20, 2011, at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. Its only other performance, the one captured for the DVD, was on March 2, 2013, at the Miller Theatre in association with the Columbia University Program in Narrative Medicine.
Hersch’s multi-hued visions are brought to life by actor/singer and Broadway veteran Michael Winther, who convincingly portrays both the comatose Hersch and the distraught Morgan, plus conductor Gregg Kallor leading the 11-piece ensemble of Hersch, four horn players, a string quartet and a rhythm section. Lighting and production designer Aaron Copp, video systems designer Eamonn Farrell, and particularly animator Sarah Wickliffe (daughter of jazz vocalist Roseanna Vitro), further blur the distinctions between dreams and reality. The project was conceived, written and directed by Grammy-winner Herschel Garfein, and the DVD shines through the filming and editing by Ross Karre and sound design, recording and mixing of Jody Elff.
“It’s a pretty intense show,” says Hersch, “Sitting in front of a TV to watch it is different from experiencing it in a theater, but I think the video captures the piece as well as it possibly could.”
Winther plays a big part in that, alternately speaking as Hersch and Morgan and powerfully delivering lyrics by Garfein in the evening’s showcase performance, “The Knitters.” Women in the dream knit objects that come to life as Winther repeats the show’s underlying mantra — “We end as we begin” — amid the ensemble’s crescendos and tempo shifts. In “Dream of Monk,” he describes a songwriting contest between Hersch and Thelonious Monk, with each trapped in a cage next to each other, before Hersch’s playing captures the late pianist’s peculiar spirit.
In “Panel Van,” Hersch dreams of being restrained (hints of his hospital bed) as John Hébert bows his bass and John Hollenbeck switches between his drums and hand-held percussives to create cacophony. “Brussels” features a stellar Hersch piano solo, plus dramatic interaction between viola player Joyce Hammann and cellist Dave Eggar, and “Jazz Diner” qualifies as Hersch’s whimsical nightmare among the visions. “The Orb,” a slow, plaintive piece with tension between the horn and string sections in which Winther describes Hersch visualizing Morgan’s face, closes the performance.
Bonus features include interviews with Hersch, Garfein, Winther, Morgan (who says that asking Hersch to keep the script a secret from him meant that he didn’t realize he was a central character until seeing the performance live), and Columbia University’s Dr. Rita Charon. Winther also delivers a well-deserved shout-out from the stage to St. Vincent’s, a facility that was once a forerunner in the battle against AIDS before closing in 2010, in-between dream sequences, and reminds the audience that people who awaken from comas don’t look the way they’re portrayed in movies or on TV.
“You don’t just wake up and say hello,” Hersch says. “You’re not smiling, with your hair looking nice, hearing people welcome you back. It’s much messier than that. I awoke after I’d gotten out of the ICU and put in a step-down unit. But I couldn’t speak because they’d paralyzed my right vocal cord when they put a tube down my throat. I was so weak that I couldn’t move a pillow; I had a feeding tube going into my stomach, and my mouth felt disgusting after two months of not salivating or ingesting fluids. I was down to 105 pounds, and really cold, but I couldn’t get anyone’s attention to do anything about it.”
Still, Hersch says, the step-down unit was where the dreams first took shape.
“They just kind of came to me,” he says, “even though I don’t usually remember my dreams. But these were vivid; all the colors, smells and atmospheric details. I wasn’t able to write them out until I had the strength and motor skills to go home about six weeks later, and then I got together with Herschel once I decided I wanted to do something with them. He came back in a few weeks with the idea for the production.”
My Coma Dreams provides a productive way for Hersch to remember the entire year, not just the summer, of his discontent. During his hospital stay, he required a tracheotomy, plus regular dialysis as he lost renal function. He had to re-learn how to walk as well as talk; was on a feeding tube rather than food and water for eight months (enduring another bout with pneumonia), and needed extensive therapy to learn how to swallow again. His hands had also drastically swollen during the ordeal, which made it more difficult to re-connect the dots at the piano.
Yet Hersch not only survived his near-death experience, but his playing better than ever. He’s since released the acclaimed solo piano disc Alone at the Vanguard (2011), and a Grammy-nominated duo CD with guitarist Julian Lage called Free Flying (2013). His interactive trio with bassist Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson has also produced the gems Whirl (2010), Alive at the Vanguard (2012) and this year’s Floating, which is selling well and appearing near the top of several critical year-end Top 10 lists.
Hersch hopes that the My Coma Dreams DVD will generate enough additional interest to warrant staging the production more often, but says that the video (which he personally paid for the filming of) also has a higher calling.
“I think the production captures the ordeal, and my dreams, really well,” he says, “and that the DVD is a very good representation. I’m so glad that it’ll make it possible for more people to see it, and hopefully raise some money to help people who really need it.”
Proceeds from the sale of My Coma Dreams, to be released on Nov. 25 in honor of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, benefit the Treatment Action Group. The DVD will be available directly at www.treatmentactiongroup.org/mcd.