Clare Fischer citations (48 citations, Page 2)

“My God, I heard this guy's albums for ages and finally to be able to look at him and see how he does it!”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

On Walter Wanderley, circa 1965, as quoted by Claudio Slon in an April 1999 interview http://bjbear71.com/Slon/Interviews.html#Interviews on KUVO-FM

“Sometime 30 years ago I wrote a piece for the Stan Kenton Neophonic Band. The night of the concert at the Music Center Auditorium in Los Angeles Stan counted it off much too fast. When it came to the recapitulation at the end, the woodwind instrumentation had changed to mixtures of piccolos, flutes and saxes; and being too fast, it turned into a woodwind knuckle-buster. I was hiding on the floor between the seats. Later, when this was recorded, Stan counted too slowly. That recording was released without my piece. Years later when Stan created his "The Creative World of Stan Kenton" record company, Capitol was so angry that he had left them and released everything they had in the can to jeopardize his market. My piece was released with the first third cut off. I rewrote this for my present instrumentation and when we first went through it, while conducting, I was in tears to finally hear what I had written 30 years ago.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

Discussing "Piece for Soft Brass, Woodwinds and Percussion"; from the liner notes for Jazz Corps

“I'm about as Nordic and Germanic looking as they come. It doesn't matter whther I'm skinny or fat. I'm just that way. So, there have been dates: for instance, the date that I first met Alex Acuna, Luis Conte, Alfredo Rey, Sr., Alfredo Rey, Jr., Cachao, the Cuban bass player. I mean, all of these people. The night I met them, on a recording date, I was there with a bunch of Cubans and I walked in, and at first, before we recorded the music, they were all standing around, hanging out. And of course I wanted to join, so I went over and started joining in. Now my Spanish certainly is not street Spanish, it's book-learned Spanish. And Cubans speak a patois all their own, and I could tell, when I first was speaking there, you know, they kept saying, "Well, he's speaking our language, but he certainly doesn't sound like us; he's still an outsider. Maybe not as much an outsider as he was before." And yet, what really happens is that, by the time we start playing, then I felt like somebody gives my visa a stamp. You know, on the passport. Because at that point, suddenly I start getting smiles from people, and different things, and that's an experience which happens over and over and over.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22there's+no+way+you+can+cut+it+any+different%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylF67i&sig=RdKDS4QiEbLIoTYKWEL4j103DPM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizzcm_38bRAhXF4yYKHWktCS8Q6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

“For my whole life I can’t remember not doing what I’m doing now, and I’m seventy. I was picking out four-part harmony at eight and nine years of age on the piano. Why? I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is it’s there and harmony is something that really stimulates the hell out of me. I just saw each thing as a logical exposure to something which I developed further.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/ by Craig Jolley, in All About Jazz (March 1999)

“The subtlety of Brazilian rhythms comes from the type of instruments used. Afro-Cuban music has a scraper called the güiro which is played with a solid stick producing a loud scraping noise. This same instrument is paralleled in Braziliam music with the reco-reco, the difference being that the reco-reco is much smaller, less resonant, and played with something like a brush. The cabasa is a gourd wrapped in beads that is incapable of extremely loud noise. The same is true of the chocalho or cylinder, and the tambourine. A regular set of drums contrasts this. The result is a light rhythm that, unlike the conga, bongos and timbales of Afro-Cuban music, does not engulf the listener but permeates him. To this is usually added the guitar (unamplified) played finger-style, which completes the subtlety.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

From "Clare Fischer on Bossa Nova" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#3f6344g3cshffpj in Downbeat (November 8, 1962), p. 23

“Johnny has never written a tune – at least none I've ever heard – that wasn't melodically and harmonically perfect.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in the liner notes from Songs for Rainy Day Lovers (1967)

“When I had a big band in the late 1960s, though, Warne and I were working quite a lot together. Warne would be turning time around, and dealing with cross-the-bar structures, and starting phrases in odd places—his intuition was really far out! He was one of the greatest players ever.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art https://books.google.com/books?id=pc4CsgVHLw0C&pg=PA65&dq=%22When+I+had+a+big+band+in+the+late+1960s,+though%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAGoVChMIhfLixv_OxwIVBTU-Ch1hfAOh#v=onepage&q=%22When%20I%20had%20a%20big%20band%20in%20the%20late%201960s%2C%20though%22&f=false

“I'm two people. One is a teddy bear who is soft and cuddly. And the other is this guy who says, "Don't push me."”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Fischer: a Ferocious Teddy Bear : Pianist Says He's Soft and Cuddly--When You Stay on His Good Side" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear by Don Heckman, in The Los Angeles Times (July 3, 1992)

“Of course that's Bud and Laurindo. I liked Laurindo very much, and I love some of the tunes he does. In fact, I've been doing some piano transcriptions of some guitar things of his, and we recently recorded a tune of his. This particular thing again—how are you going to equate it? As jazz? As Brazilioan music or what? I wiould much rather hear Laurindo in his native habitat. I know he and Bud have been associated this way before, yet I don't feel that a real good rapport goes on between them. The constant mixing—half-jazz, half-Brazillian—I don't think it's good. You lose certain features of the one when you try to come out with the other. Let's give that three stars.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

Reviewing "Tocata" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a940h3-1NV0 from Brazilliance; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

“I have no idea who that is. It's a terrible performance, the band is horribly out of tune—is that Maynard Ferguson? It starts off at a dynamic peak and never deviates from it. It also starts out with what is supposed to be jazz musicians trying to play some sort of a Latin bag, which is not making it, because there's no solidity of rhythms. Latin rhythm sections being based on the constant contrast of instruments, and it never moves any place. And then that thing on the end—what's that supposed to be? An adaptation of Porgy and Bess of some sort? I guess it was some sort of an allusion toward Porgy and Bess. But then if it is, it's completely escaped all the rest of it. It's like giving a paragraph of reference out of a two-page article and then saying, Well, this is about this.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

That's one star for me.
Reviewing Slide Hampton's arrangement of "It Ain't Necessarily So" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a940h3-1NV0 from Two Sides of Slide; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

“As a teenager I had already arranged pieces for the school band in exchange for music lessons. I also played cello, clarinet, and some other instruments regularly. Thanks to that experience, as an arranger I was able to understand the specific sound and tuning of an instrument and to work intuitively.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Clare Fischer: The Best Kept Secret in Jazz" http://www.artistinterviews.eu/?page_id=5&parent_id=22/ by Maarten De Haan, in Artist Interview (1998)

“It's funny. People come to my house because I was recommended to them to do some writing. They've never heard of me, and you can see the reticence written all over their faces. Then they look at the walls and see the platinum and gold albums and they say, "Oh. That one's from Prince! That's from Robert Palmer! Oh my God, Paul McCartney!" And then they say, "You're a really fine composer"--without having heard any of my music.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Fischer: A Ferocious Teddy Bear" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear

“Since suffering a concussion eight years ago, I find my inside emotions are right to the front and as such, when I heard that Antonio Carlos Jobim had died in December of 1994 I was much affected, I experienced happenings like no other time in my life. While sleeping one night, I dreamed that I was conducting a recording session with strings in Brazil and we were performing Jobim's "Corcovado," except that besides thje melody and harmony, there was polyharmonic bass line. As I awakened from this dream, I went to my piano and wrote down what I had dreamed.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

Explaining the genesis of the track "Corcovado Fúnebre" in the liner notes from Clare Fischer's Jazz Corps

“When I asked Sergio Mendes why he still called his group Brasil '66 in 1967, he said "'66 was a very good year!" That's his group and the French song from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's not one of their better tracks. Some of the things they've done I have enjoyed tremendously, though it's getting to the point where he's had commercial success doing what he's doing, so it's now somewhere in between strong Brazilian music and quasi-rock. Joao Palma is an excellent drummer. Here they have John Pisano of the Tijuana Brass playing an amplified guitar. He is one of the few people who, on the regular amplified guitar, has really got the Brazilian thing down. He can play in the Baden Powell style, which is so compelling and so dynamic. Sergio is usually a much more melodic pianist, but here he's trying to give a hardness and vitality to the over-all commercial sound, and he comes out lacking what he usually has—his lines are usually very smoothly melodic. This has nothing to do with jazz, but I find it pleasant; on the other hand, some of the things they do, like O Pato [from Mendes' previous album], or some of the faster things, I enjoy much more. Two stars.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

Reviewing Mendes' recording of Michel Legrand's '"Watch What Happens," from the album Equinox; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu

“You have to recognize those writers who are artists in the same sense as the musicians.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

“I found, once I passed the age of forty, that I have a good sense of humor. It’s only through that I can keep stuﬀ oﬀ and go through my life. If you sit and try to take on everything that is going on out there, you’re going to end up with problems. That’s where I feel music. And music becomes the way in which I express feelings. And, because it allows me to have contact with my emotions, it’s a constant catharsis, not just playing and writing. By doing that, you alleviate something inside of you. And who knows where that comes from?”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

“I had a concussion nine years ago, and that changed things. I had always been sensitive musically, but now, since the concussion, I ﬁnd the emotion is there immediately. There is no build. I hear several chord changes — it could be three or four chord changes from a string orchestra — and, man, I’m just gushing tears. I don’t take it as a weakness. Sometimes it might get slightly embarrassing to observers. On the other hand, I’m not putting it on. I’m in no way trying to exaggerate feeling. My feelings are exactly the opposite. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t be quite as sensitive because then I wouldn’t have to go through this thing when I write.”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in "Meet Clare Fischer" http://cdassassin.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/1999-interview-at-allaboutjazz-com/

“Tristano was too contrived for me; he sounded terribly planned. Lee is very intuitive. One of my proudest achievements was when I finally got to play the saxophone well enough that I could improvise on it. I aimed to have a tone like Lee Konitz—but I don't necessarily think I got there!”

Help us translate this quote

Clare Fischer

As quoted in Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art https://books.google.com/books?id=pc4CsgVHLw0C&pg=PA65&dq=%22Tristano+was+too+contrived+for+me%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIrKPnnf_OxwIVBDU-Ch0dxg5F#v=onepage&q=%22Tristano%20was%20too%20contrived%20for%20me%22&f=falseLee