Fred Hersch was born October 21, 1955, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Jewish parents, and began playing piano at age four. He developed a nuanced, sophisticated approach to both standards and original composition, influenced by pianists including Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson, and became the first musician to play weeklong solo engagements at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

Alongside his performing career, Hersch became an influential jazz educator, teaching at the New England Conservatory, the Juilliard School, the New School, Rutgers University, and the Manhattan School of Music; both pianist Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus's Ethan Iverson count among his former students. He has written and recorded more than 75 original compositions and released twelve solo recordings, including 2024's Silent, Listening, made in collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher for the ECM label.

A seventeen-time Grammy nominee, Hersch has received a Doris Duke Artist Award (2016), Jazz Pianist of the Year honors from the Jazz Journalists Association (2011, 2016, 2018), the Jazz Magazine (France) International Artist of the Year award (2021), and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition (2003).

Hersch's classically informed touch and harmonic sophistication, filtered through the lineage of Jamal, Evans, and Peterson, established him as one of the defining solo jazz pianists of his generation, and his three decades of teaching at the country's leading conservatories shaped the playing of subsequent generations of pianists directly through the classroom.