Fred Hersch Trio With the Crosby Street String Quartet
‘Breath by Breath’ (Palmetto Records)

“Monkey Mind” opens with a few bars of a bass playing a single line solo; these are echoed by a violin playing pizzicato. This pattern is repeated about three times overall, first a few notes of bass, followed by the violin. Then, the idea is repeated and varied; the same notes, but different instruments.  

The piano and the drums get into the act; first a few piano notes, then a few drum beats, in the same pattern. Next, the exchange is between the piano and the pizzicato violin.  Then, it’s the drums and the bass. The piano next plays a slightly longer phrase, with the drums in the background, which gradually expands into something more like an improvised solo. Taking its cue from the title, the piece does sound like a playful exercise in repetition and variation that might find a parallel in the notion of one monkey seeing, and another doing.

This is one of eight movements that comprise Fred Hersch’s “Sati Suite,” a work for jazz trio, with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jochen Rueckert, played with the Crosby Street String Quartet. The suite forms the central portion of Mr. Hersch’s new album, “Breath by Breath,” and it also was performed live by this combination in a brilliant concert at 92Y on Saturday evening.

Mr. Hersch explained that the term “Sati Suite” does not refer to the French composer Erik Satie, but rather to a word in the Pali language, spoken on the Indian subcontinent and employed in Buddhist meditation practices there. It refers to “mindfulness” or “awareness.” Confession: I don’t claim to understand even the first thing about Buddhism, yoga, or meditation, but I am proof positive that one doesn’t need to have any sort of familiarity with these concepts to enjoy this music. To me, it fulfills all the requirements of both American jazz and European classical music, while at least partly inventing a new musical vocabulary all its own.

The first movement of the “Sati Suite” is titled “Begin Again,” and yes, I can imagine that the idea of beginning something more than once is part of Eastern spirituality. Yet let it be said that there’s no appreciable Eastern music here; if anything the piece is inspired by the baroque counterpoint of Bach or Vivaldi. At times the strings form a background to the jazz trio; at other points, they play opposite each other, like two complimentary ensembles in something like a concerto grosso format.

The second and third pieces, “Awakened Heart” and “Breath by Breath,” both have titles that apparently refer to meditative practices. We don’t think of breath as being particularly relevant to non-wind instruments, but pianos and violins rely on breath — at least as a rhythmic imperative — even as much as horns do. “Breath by Breath” is one of several pieces in which the quartet backs up Mr. Gress in solo, giving us the unique sound of arco strings backing up a bigger, deeper string-playing pizzicato.

“Mara,” conversely, employs a lot of pizzicato in the background, while a solo string up front plays arco. In his program notes, Mr. Hersch says it was inspired by the story of the deity called Mara who “tempted Buddha with wine, women and riches as he was trying to attain enlightenment under the bodhi tree.” If I hadn’t been aware of that, I would have guessed it was a musical essay on the nature of time, since the click of the plucked strings suggests, to my ears, the tick-tock of a clock, or several, in a polyrhythmic pattern. Some pieces are mostly the piano trio; this one is primarily the strings, with keyboard notes essentially at the end.

Likewise, by listening to the fifth movement, I would have assumed it was a love song, and never guessed the title was actually “Rising, Falling,” which apparently refers to another part of the breathing and meditation process. Indeed, the entire “Sati Suite” might be described as a meditation on the act of mediation itself. Mr. Hersch plays a lovely, deliberately rambling piano solo in a way that suggests a journey inward. It’s beautiful enough with just the bass and drums, but even more so as the strings gradually enter behind him. He hits a few notes that momentarily suggest Johnny Mandel’s, “A Time for Love,” and indeed, it is.

The album concludes with a ninth piece, titled “Pastoral,” inspired by Robert Schumann.  The 92Y concert featured more encores, among them two more originals, “Heartsong” and “Valentine.” The latter is possibly Mr. Hersch’s best-known song, with lyrics written and sung by the British jazz vocalist Norma Winstone. Also known as “A Wish,” it’s a perfect candidate for the trio plus string quartet treatment. 

Mr. Hersch ended symmetrically with two standards, one from Hollywood, “This is Always,” eternally associated with Charlie Parker, and one by a jazz composer, Thelonious Monk’s “Pannonica.”

There followed a standing ovation and a genuine encore — Mr. Hersch didn’t deliberately end the set early for the purpose of milking the audience, like Keith Jarrett, great musician that he is, always seemed to do. Mr. Hersch concluded the all-too-short concert with Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes,” a contemporary song that to me is a much more exquisitely moving blend of a hymn and a love song than Leonard Cohen’s overdone “Hallelujah.” Mr. Hersch played it unaccompanied, as he did on his 2017 album “Open Book,” in a manner reminiscent of the spiritual “Balm in Gilead” as well as William Blake’s “Jerusalem.”  

Mr. Hersch’s astute combination of his own arrangements and mostly original compositions for jazz trio and string quartet (Joyce Hammann and Laura Seaton, violins; Lois Martin, viola; and Jody Redhage Ferber, cello) is precisely the kind of music that the late critic Gunther Schuller famously described as “Third Stream,” equal parts jazz and classical. Does this open a debate as to whether something can be two things at once without actually being a whole new third thing? I’ll ponder the philosophical implications later. Right now, I’m too busy loving the music.