Clare Fischer - "Star on the Rise" by John Tynan
© Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“Clare Fischer
PIANO, ARRANGER
Born 22 October 1928, Died January 26, 2012
Fischer spent his teens in Grand Rapids, MI, where he mastered a wide range of instruments - keyboards, saxophones and cello among them. After university study, he got a job arranging material for The Hi-Lo's, and secured wider attention with a set of charts for a Dizzy Gillespie Verve album, A Portrait Of Duke Ellington (1960). He spent most of the 1960s in a dual role as a commercial arranger and a jazz pianist: a string of albums in the latter capacity, for Pacific Jazz and Revelation, have never made it beyond a small cult following and urgently require CD revival. He has long had a great love for Latin rhythms, and much of his composing is in this vein, with 'Pensativa' perhaps his best-known piece in the idiom. In the 80s and 90s he was still doing charts for pop projects (Madonna was one artist who availed herself of his talents) while making occasional albums of his own, almost as an afterthought. Fischer's range in his own records has been unusually wide, and he hasn't been shy about doing kitsch and lightweight projects, which can seem curiously flimsy next to the often demanding listening of his solo piano sets. Perhaps it's all music to him.”
Published in the June 8, 1961 edition of Downbeat, this “first look” at Clare Fischer focuses almost exclusively on his work as an arranger, understandably since the first albums under his own name as a pianist would come in 1962 - First Time Out [Pacific Jazz 52] - and in 1963 Surging Ahead [PJ 67]. From this point onwards, Clare was to become a major force on the Jazz West Coast scene in a number of musical capacities as noted in the opening statement by Richard Cook. My personal favorite was the long association he established with vibraphonist Cal Tjader which continued until Cal’s death in 1982.
In the 1960s, Jazz on the West Coast was going in a new direction and pianist, composer-arranger and bandleader Clare Fischer was one of the main musicians taking it there.
When John Tynan concludes his piece with the following statement, he had no idea how prophetic it would become: “If this period is a new era for Jazz arrangers, an era during which the hoary screen of anonymity will be ripped away, then clearly this era should be Clare Fischer's.”
© Copyright ® John Tynan/Downbeat Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved, the author claims no right of copyright usage.
“Recognition comes slowly to arrangers in jazz. A new trumpet star may rise overnight: an Ornette Coleman may blast onto the scene and, by sheer impact of daring and unconventionality, become the darling of the hip.
For arrangers, though, the road is rougher. In terms of public acceptance and or notoriety, an arranger's crawl to fame is easy to understand. There seems to be a lack of what might be termed "color" in the average arranger. To the jazz public, he is a shadowy figure, hunched over score paper. His name seldom appears on single records, and on album liners his credits usually are reduced to small type and buried. Moreover, he is unknown to the public as a person, a human entity. Unless he holds down a sideman's chair in a band, audiences never get a glimpse of him, and the arranger in turn is rarely confronted by an audience.
Clare Fischer's case has proved no exception. Buried for four years as staff arranger for the Hi-Lo's, Fischer only recently emerged from the cocoon he never made. Since the release of Dizzy Gillespie's album, A Portrait of Duke Ellington, Fischer's work is attracting further attention in a new Cal Tjader LP of music from the show West Side Story, (n preparation is a second Tjader record of Harold Arlen songs, plus another album written for trumpeter Donald Byrd (the Byrd set still lies on a shelf at Warner Bros., apparently unwanted by that company).
Fischer is a 32-year-old native of Durand, Mich. Brisk of manner, businesslike and an animated talker, he exudes self-assurance, is quick to smile and appears as a young man very much on the go.
"My mother," he said, "played piano, and my father the banjo. He wound up as international board president of the Society for Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America," Thus, young Fischer's background held promise.
From 1946 until 1952, he studied at Michigan State university for his bachelor of music degree, returning in 1955 for his Master's. The intervening years were spent as arranger with the Military Academy Band at West Point, "I was the first draftee to be accepted in that band," he said. With two years of study in instrumental conducting, piano, cello, and clarinet behind him, he took a graduate assistant professorship at his alma mater. Then, in 1955, he went to Detroit, where, two years later, he formed a trio to accompany the singing Hi-Lo’s.
The vocal group was on the rise at that time, and, observing unusual talent in Fischer's accompaniment and writing, the leader, Gene Puerling, asked the young arranger to join the group on the road. "Which," smiled Fischer, "was what I’d wanted in the first place."
Four years and a quartet of Hi-Lo's albums later, a light of sorts began to dawn on the arranger, "I finally got it through my head," he said, "that nobody was going to give me credit for what I was doing," (He was, however, credited with arranging two originals, Agogically So and Mayforth.) It was then he decided he would be better off as a freelance writer.
As his recorded work attests. Fischer's attitude toward his craft is firmly rooted in originality of conception and thought. He believes ideas become outmoded and trite as they become more widely disseminated and imitated.
Therefore, he concludes, "Seek to avoid your own clichés as you progress and regard your work as composing rather than arranging,"
Though he professes great interest in arranging from a harmonic standpoint, Fischer said he does not believe classical techniques are outmoded. Nor does he believe it necessary to develop new approaches to writing, such as George Russell's pan-tonality or Ornette Coleman's ultra-free conception. He noted, however, that the arranger's approach to conventional instrumentation may well become more flexible, more imaginative than that now employed.
“I find some musicians rebel at this notion," he observed, "because they're so used to playing in a certain groove." In addition, he noted that this demand on his own imagination not only presents a personal challenge, it also challenges the contractor whose responsibility it is to hire suitable musicians for a record date. The recording engineers are involved as well. In view of the recorded evidence of inept engineering on the aforementioned Gillespie album, the latter observation would appear to be well founded. In that connection he noted, "Diz and I were disappointed with the balances on the album. Many times it was naïve . . . Which brings up the point that if you're going to have good product, you've got to handle it all yourself."
Though Fischer is now settled with his wife, Zoe Ann, in a roomy apartment above Hollywood's Sunset Strip, he is far from wholly content.
"The one thing I detest here," he commented, "is the show-biz attitude toward background writing, that is the idea that the only way to write backgrounds is not to detract from the soloist. The idea should be for the arranger to work with the soloist so as to enhance his contribution. If they want a lackey behind them, okay; but if they want a musical background, then they should expect the background to be musical."
Clare Fischer is young, ambitious, talented, and apparently better adjusted emotionally than many of his jazz contemporaries. He seems to want success badly. Yet, one senses that once it is within his grasp, he is not likely to succumb to the “bitch goddess,” though men of bigger talents and aspirations have found the spot at the top of the totem pole too dizzying to cope with.
Not that Fischer's aspirations are modest. "I want to do what Andre Previn does," he confessed. "Playing, writing, conducting. I love to play. The one thing I do not want is to be pegged into one arranging style. I'm a jazz musician, but music to me is more than one particular thing. I get interested in Mozart piano pieces, and I love the hell out of Bach."
If this period is a new era for Jazz arrangers, an era during which the hoary screen of anonymity will be ripped away, then clearly this era should be Clare Fischer's.”