Disclosure a Risk, but He Plays On : Jazz: Rare among his colleagues, Fred Hersch acknowledged his HIV status and sexual orientation. Opportunities followed.

Fred Hersch doesn’t have a lot of time for self-pity these days. With no less than seven albums on the market that include his participation as piano soloist, producer or composer, his 20-year career in the jazz business has suddenly begun to take off.

Ironically, the increased attention is, in some measure at least, related to his announcement last year that he is HIV-positive and gay--the first such public revelation by a well-known jazz performer. Perhaps more than any other area of the entertainment world, jazz has avoided addressing the issues of sexual orientation and AIDS. And for Hersch, 38, a Grammy-nominated performer (for his album “Dancing in the Dark” on Chesky Records), the disclosure may well be a double-edged sword, enhancing his visibility while potentially risking his career.

“Very few of the gay jazz musicians I know are out of the closet,” says Hersch, who lives in New York. “Gary Burton, I kind of pushed out of the closet, and now he’s come out, publicly, on National Public Radio.”

Burton, a vibraphonist, responds, “Fred was one of the first persons I called when I decided to come out. I didn’t actually know him at the time, but he was the only other jazz musician I knew of who had announced he was gay.”

“There’s a longer list than you might think,” says Hersch, “and nine out of 10 are still in the closet. So I decided it was time for somebody to break the mold a bit.”

Hersch, who has been AIDS asymptomatic since 1986, has underscored his determination to “break the mold” by producing an all-star jazz album, “Last Night When We Were Young: The Ballad Album,” as an AIDS fund-raiser for Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS. It includes 13 ballad renderings by a lineup of performers both gay and heterosexual that ranges from Burton, Hersch, alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, harmonica player Toots Thielemans and pianist George Shearing to singers Mark Murphy, Janis Siegel and Andy Bey.

Among the many highlights are “Little Prayer,” featuring the excellent if little-known Texas pianist Dave Catney, now ill with full-blown AIDS and also a gay jazz musician who has gone public. Other superb moments in this gorgeously atmospheric collection include Thielemans’ passionate reading of “Estate,” Brazilian pop star Leny Andrade’s “Quiet Nights (Corcovado),” Siegel’s “More Than You Know” and Murphy’s almost painfully moving interpretation of the title track.

“When you hear ‘Last Night When We Were Young’ in this context, it really has a poignant quality,” says Hersch. “I think Mark’s reading kind of sums up the whole project.”

The album has been out for about a month. Initial reviews have been excellent, and sales have begun to gather momentum.

But despite the distinction of the music and the impressive name value of the participants, Hersch thus far has been unsuccessful in placing the album with a major record company. At the moment, it can be obtained only by phone orders, (800) 321-AIDS. Broadway Cares, the agency that initiated the red-ribbon AIDS program, is administering sales.

“I thought for sure that I would have no problem at all placing it (with a major label),” Hersch says. “A lot of labels said, ‘We love it, it’s a beautiful record, with great artists, and it’s a great concept. But, hey, if we’re going to do something like this, we’d rather do it in-house with our own artists.’ But, of course, they’re not doing it. And I was handing them what I already had done, for nothing.”

Does he feel there has been undue reluctance on the part of major jazz labels to deal with an AIDS fund-raising recording?

“I don’t want to say that. After all, there have been some successful AIDS fund-raising albums. ‘Red Hot & Blue’ and ‘Red Hot & Dance’ did pretty well. I think there’s a country one, too. But the only one that I really know about in the jazz area was something on GRP Records that came and went quickly a year or so ago called, I think, ‘We’re All in This Together.’ ”

GRP spokesman Michael Bloom confirmed that the record was released in 1993 and contains classic tracks from Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane as well as tunes from Patti Austin, David Benoit, Dave Grusin and others. The company plans to release another AIDS benefit album titled “Red, Hot & Jazz” in 1995.

“I’m just hoping,” Hersch says, “that now that (the ‘Ballad Album’) is getting reviews and radio play, that it eventually will find the right home with a major distributor. All we can do is hope that people will use the toll-free number until we make other arrangements.”

Hersch did not reach his decision to go public with his sexual orientation easily. The jazz world has long held on to the myth of the macho, self-destructive male musician, as Hersch was well aware when he moved to New York from his Cincinnati home in the late ‘70s.

“My first and most important goal at the time was that I really wanted to make it in jazz,” he recalls. “I came to New York to play with the best people I could play with, and I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.”

Hersch was “so ambitious” and “so driven” that he felt compelled to suppress who he was, terrified of the consequences if the jazz legends he was working with were to discover his sexual orientation.

“At that time, I knew no other gay jazz musicians,” he says, “so I led a kind of dual existence--gay friends on one side, musician friends on the other, but never the same. And the funny thing is that the feeling of isolation I experienced in the jazz community wasn’t really all that unfamiliar to me, because that’s how gay people often feel throughout their childhood. You realize that you’re attracted to members of your same sex, and there’s nobody to talk about it with. The others are always talking about the opposite sex.”

In addition to the “Ballad Album,” Hersch has a new solo release on Concord (“Fred Hersch at Maybeck”), a trio album on Chesky (“The Fred Hersch Trio Plays . . . “), several compositions on two other AIDS benefit albums (“The AIDS Quilt Songbook” on Harmonia Mundi/Nightingale and “Memento Bittersweet” on BMG/Catalyst) and has produced and played on albums for Andrade and cabaret singer Mary Cleere Haran.

But he worries that his expanded visibility may be countered by a hesitation on the part of promoters to book him for future dates.

“Look, the simple fact is that I’d like to work more,” he says. “I’d like to work as much as I possibly can. When you’re facing the clock, you just sort of say, ‘Well, what’s important to me?’ And making music is important.

“But I know there are some people out there who are going to say, ‘I’d like to book Fred next summer, but I don’t know if I want to risk a booking. Maybe he won’t be here.’ I can’t control that kind of ignorance. Of course, it’s true, I might not be here. But that could apply to anybody.

“It’s very weird. If you have cancer, you can look at it on a CAT scan and say, ‘Well, there it is.’ But this is more mysterious. It’s like you’re a little kid, and it’s at night, and your parents have gone to sleep. The closet door is open a little bit, and you imagine there’s some monster in there that’s going to come out, but you don’t know what it’s going to look like or what it’s going to do. It’s pretty strange.”

But “the main thing for me is what it’s always been--to keep growing as a musician, to keep trying new things, to keep stretching by playing with people with whom I can be myself and to keep challenging myself.

“Sure, I wish I wasn’t HIV-positive. But that’s just the way it is. I wish there was no war and no cancer, too, but it just doesn’t work out that way.

“I’ve seen some people with AIDS go through amazing transformations, with great realizations. It’s ironic that they sometimes don’t get it together until the last years of their lives. But as long as you get there, it really doesn’t matter when it is. There’s a line from George Eliot that says it all: ‘It’s never too late to be what you might have been.’ ”