The Ballad of Fred Hersch

Director/Producer

a film by Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozano

documentary film - 74:00 - 2016

DESCRIPTION

The Ballad of Fred Hersch is an intimate portrait of one of today’s foremost jazz pianists. With more than 30 albums and 10 Grammy nominations, Hersch is internationally revered in jazz circles as a master improviser. A maverick in music and in life, he was the first jazz musician to come out as gay and HIV-positive in the early 1990s, and he miraculously survived a two-month coma in 2008. Both exacting and full of love, our unfettered cameras capture Hersch’s creative process as he does double duty as a workaday jazzman and first-time theater producer—turning his tragedies into triumphal art.

PRESS

HONORS

WATCH

FUNDERS

“This is one not to miss.”

– INDY News

“The Ballad of Fred Hersch operates with much the same logic as a jazz session, […] any audience can appreciate its simple honesty, bravery, and beauty”

– Unseen Films

New York Review of Books

Official Selection

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Official Selection

DOCNYC

Official Selection

Mill Valley Film Festival

The Reva and David Logan Foundation

Catapult Film Fund

Adobe Inc.

Linda and Stuart Nelson

Ambassador James C. Hormel

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Upcoming screenings