Hey, what's up everybody? Adam Anis here. We are still on our summer hiatus. Peter Martin's traveling right now. I'm off

next week, so we won't be back until September, but we wanted to give you a little bit of a gift

to tide you over. I wanted to share part of an interview with the great Fred Hirsch. This is from

his open studio course, thoughts and experiments in solo piano. Fred is being interviewed here by one of our open studio

team members and very fine pianists in his own right, Brian Fielding. Their old friends,

Brian has known Fred and studied with Fred for years and years and years. And in this excerpt of

the almost hour-long interview, Brian and Fred talk about some really, really cool and

important things. It starts off with kind of a talking about mindfulness at the instrument,

and then it goes into Fred just discussing what it was like to come of age and learn about jazz

piano in New York in the 70s,

surrounded by these masters like Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris.

And it's just a really fascinating look into the life and the career

of one of our favorite pianists around here at Open Studio

and you'll hear a podcast.

And we thought you would enjoy it.

So please enjoy this conversation with Fred Hirsch.

A lot of what I've talked about in this course is pretty much akin to a meditation practice.

When you sit down on a cushion for, let's say, a half an hour and you put your

little timer there, you don't really know what's going to happen. You might be fidgety,

you might be planning, you might get tired, your shoulders might hurt, or you might be in this beautiful flow of being with

the breath or the hearing sensations or the feel of your body on the cushion, and that

could last for 10 breaths or it could last for 10 minutes.

...