Fred Hersch has earned his place in jazz. He talks living Breath by Breath: Video, CD cover

Fred Hersch probably couldn’t imagine a worse time for an interview.

When I called the eminent jazz pianist at home in Manhattan, he’d just found out that the trumpeter and flugelhornist Enrico Rava, 83, with whom he released ”The Song Is You” (ECM Records) in September, had been admitted to the hospital. The same morning, Hersch’s husband Scott Morgan had tested positive for COVID-19. Hersch thought he’d be spending the next several days performing with Rava in Italy. Instead, he was on his way out the door to abscond to his and Morgan’s rural Pennsylvania cottage, alone, while Morgan recovered.

“So, a little bit of drama,” Hersch said placidly, as though discussing breakfast.

That unflappable calm wasn’t forged overnight. Hersch, who turned 67 last month, became one of the first major jazz artists to come out as gay and HIV positive in the early 1990s — a professionally risky decision in a scene that was, especially at that time, overwhelmingly straight and male. Then, in 2008, Hersch nearly died from septic shock. He spent two months in a medically induced coma; when he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, he all but had to re-teach himself piano.

Hersch partly attributes his groundedness to his meditation practice, which, he insists, isn’t too far off from playing music. (”When I started sitting meditation, I realized, “Oh, I’ve been doing this my whole life, just on piano bench.”) No wonder musicians flock to him as a duo partner, a relatively rare configuration in jazz that requires not only intense focus but profound trust. Up next is “Alive at the Village Vanguard” (Jan. 6, 2023, Palmetto Records), a duo album recorded live in 2018 at the venerable club with vocalist and bassist Esperanza Spalding.

Pianist and composer Fred Hersch is in concert Nov. 9 at Evanston SPACE.

Before then, he’ll visit at Evanston SPACE with his new trio, which is featured on another recent release: “Breath by Breath,” which augments the jazz group with the plush sonics of a string quartet (the Crosby Street String Quartet; in a nod to the LaSalle String Quartet, the group named itself after the New York street at which they first rehearsed with Hersch).