Fred Hersch's 1988 Studio Duet Became an Album 38 Years Later

The album exists because two people remembered what a casual afternoon had produced. In August 1988, guitarist Mick Goodrick came down from Boston to Fred Hersch's New York studio. They played for four or five hours and recorded about two hours of music without planning a commercial release. After Goodrick's death, his estate executor David Lee asked Hersch to revisit the session. Hersch sequenced 40 minutes, ECM said yes, and “Feebles, Fables and Ferns” finally appeared on 19 June 2026.

The risky part was built into the instruments. Piano and guitar can both supply chords and dense single-note lines, leaving a duo vulnerable to harmonic congestion. Hersch said the players can easily step on one another unless they stay sensitive to the combined sound. His test for deep listening was blunt: “You know when to play [and] when not to play.” The record was not shaped by one instrument leading and the other behaving as accompaniment.

That balance could not be manufactured after the session. Hersch and engineer A. T. Michael MacDonald recorded a live two-track mix, not a multitrack session; later production could only rebalance the piano and guitar modestly. ECM describes the title piece through the way the two lines interweave on the spot, while “Heartsong” passes its theme back and forth between the instruments. The handover keeps changing, but the texture never becomes a contest for the centre.

“Five Excursions” strips the method down to almost nothing. Across five linked improvisations, Hersch would start one, Goodrick another, and the pair another together. For Hersch, the hard skill was recognising when an improvisation had said enough and stopping it. That restraint explains why two harmonically complete instruments can occupy the same 39 minutes without crowding one another: another chord is sometimes the least useful thing either musician could add.