Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life in and out of Jazz

Jazz pianist and composer Hersch recalls his struggle to live in society as a gay man, as well as his battles with AIDS, in this honest and well-wrought memoir. Hersch looks back on his closeted, musically precocious youth; his emergence on the jazz and gay scenes in 1970s New York, two lives that he kept separate because of homophobia in the jazz community; and his later career as a headline performer, Grammy-nominated recording artist, and AIDS activist. Hersch comes across as complex: he’s insecure about his attractiveness, his jazz chops, and even his family standing; he felt sorely aggrieved that his parents bought him, at age 11, a mere Baldwin grand piano instead of a Steinway; and he’s admittedly paranoid, as when he detected a homophobic slur when a glowing New Yorker review referred to his playing as “light-fingered.” Hirsch wonderfully captures the experience of ensemble-jazz improvisation—“It’s almost sex”—as well as the colorful characters throughout, but sometimes he gets bogged down in the itinerary of gigs and recording sessions that is a jazz musician’s life. Hersch’s narrative really grips during his agonizing recovery from a two-month, near-death coma resulting from AIDS complications, an ordeal that lends depth and pathos to this candid memoir. Photos. [em](Sept.) [/em]