Clare and Brent Fischer
Clare Fischer may not be a household name, but to the cognoscenti it rings loud and true. He began his career in LA in the late ’50s as a keyboardist, composer, bandleader and arranger and has worked with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Prince and Celine Dion. In this freewheeling session at the 2005 Red Bull Music Academy, he and his son Brent explain all about arranging and reveal why you should never listen to producers or record labels.
Hosted by Monk One Welcome. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves last night with the great music that we heard at McCaw Hall, and I hope you didn’t enjoy yourselves too much afterwards. It’s my great, great pleasure and honour to introduce Dr Clare Fischer [applause] and Mr Brent Fischer [applause]. Clare Fischer I haven’t got used to the term ‘Dr’ yet. That was an honorary degree given to me by my alma mater, Michigan State University. The only time I call myself ‘Dr’ is when I go to a restaurant and I want a good reservation. Then I say, ”Dr Fischer and his wife.” Brent Fischer It worked out well for me. Now, when they say Mr Fischer I know who they’re referring to. He’s Dr and I’m Mr. Monk One [to Brent] Can you give us a little history about your father and what he’s been involved with musically? Clare Fischer If you get him talking, he won’t stop. Monk One That’s what we’re here for. Brent Fischer [to Clare] You can cut in anywhere you like. [to audience] One thing you should know about my father, is that one of the ways in which he was able to become such a good writer is that when he was in high school he would play every single instrument in the orchestra. When the teacher wanted a good part he would give him the instrument and a fingering chart and he would learn it. And that was a tremendous educational influence. Clare Fischer Also orchestrationally. Brent Fischer Yes, to learn about the different features and peculiarities of every instrument. It was also in the orchestra that he met his true love, his wife right there, Donna. Clare Fischer She played viola in the orchestra and I played cello. That was right there [points]. Brent Fischer But they did not get married right out of high school. Her mother would not let him marry her because he was a musician. Clare Fischer No, she was a classical musician and to her I was a jazzer. She was snobbish as hell [laughter]. [shouts] You’re wrong, mother! Brent Fischer I’m sure there are jazz musicians today who won’t let their kids marry a punk rocker or a heavy metal head, same thing. He got his masters degree at Michigan State University and then moved to LA in the 1950s and ended up working with his own big band, worked for other big bands as a writer, backing up many famous groups of the time, the '50s and '60s. Then he got into the TV and film industry and if any of you have watched any TV shows from the '60s and '70s, chances are you’ve heard him play. Do any of you remember the theme song from the Columbo Murder Mysteries? Before synthesizers, before pitch-bend on organs, there used to be a felt strip and you could move your finger along it and it would go up and down in pitch. And that’s him moving his fingers along. Clare Fischer 'Daa-de-da daa-de-da, daa-de-da-da-duh.' That’s a lot of sliding. Brent Fischer Yeah, he played on The Brady Bunch, just about every major motion picture that was recorded in the late '60s and early '70s. He was in on the developments that took place in organs and keyboards. Once they got the synthesizers, though, he wasn’t quite so interested anymore. There’s something about the organ and the keyboards that still have an orchestrational use. Synthesizers and sound effects were not as appealing… Clare Fischer ...their musical qualities... Brent Fischer ...as the orchestrational qualities of the original instruments. I have, however, got into that a little bit. I started out as a drummer. He was nice enough to get me a set. I was playing on cardboards boxes and stuff from when I was three years old. I got my first set when I was six. Later on I got interested in electric bass. Still got my degree in percussion, symphony percussion - timpani, vibraphone, marimba, these instruments – but continued working as an electric bass player. He's had a Latin jazz quintet since 1978 or ’79. At one point he was using an upright bass player and it wasn’t quite the sound he was looking for. At that point I’d just become skilled at electric bass and he decided he liked the sound of the electric bass more. Clare Fischer Not just the sound, you hear the pitch more. On an upright bass when you get down low all you hear is the thump, you don’t get the pitch. Brent Fischer He made me earn my way into that group, there was no free ride just because I was his son. He is merciless to anyone and everyone. His favourite saying is, "There’s only one level and that is professional." So that was great experience for me because my butt was on the line at every gig. It didn’t matter that I was 16 and working these little nightclubs with his band, I still had to pull my weight. Anyway, I did get into computer music sequencing in the '80s, I got myself a really nice studio that had everything. That was before Digital Performer and Pro Tools and all that stuff, everything was MIDI at that point. I found for myself I was not quite as adept at computers as I’d like to be, so I got out of that. At the same time my musical interests expanded. And all the projects he’s [my father] done for the last 25 years, I’ve been involved in, either as a musician or as a contractor, a project manager, acting as his manager. Clare Fischer Yes, it’s called nepotism. [audience laughter] Brent Fischer Exactly. That made me able to absorb all the different things I saw him working with, not through personal experience of playing them myself, but learning how he had to write for an alto clarinet or the different possibilities with every little instrument in the orchestra, including some of the unusual ones that are his favourites. There are quite a few instruments that are out there that people don’t use very often, for instance, bass saxophone. I became interested in that. So you could say that electronic and synthesized music was old school for me. 'New school' is writing for instruments now. I’ve only been doing it for about 12 years, and only seriously and professionally for the last five, but I think it’s the place where I feel most comfortable. After that he started writing string arrangements for himself and for… Clare Fischer Brent Fischer No, he started for Rufus and Chaka Khan, if anyone remembers them from the '70s, Santana and the Jackson 5. Remember the Jackson 5 before Michael Jackson? Then the work for Prince started, there was a CD for Paul McCartney, actually it was an LP, we still had LPs back then. Then the work for Prince started in '85, the first thing we did for him was the Parade album together with a movie called Under The Cherry Moon, the film he did after Parade. Then Prince produced some songs for a CD, the first English language CD for a Canadian lady who was only usually singing in French, Celine Dion. He asked my father to produce some string arrangements for her first English language album. Since then we’ve worked for Dru Hill, Toni Braxton, Natalie Cole. That’s also the point where he got his doctorate from his alma mater and in the middle of this whole thing, in the early '90s, he re-met Donna at a high school reunion. Clare Fischer That was the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Brent Fischer After nearly 45 years of being apart, they’ve now been married for 12… Clare Fischer 13 years. And I’m 77 and she’s 75, so it’s late. Brent Fischer But they’re happier than ever. We work together on charts now. Sometimes I’ll write things, sometimes he’ll do them by himself. My part started about 12, 13 years ago when there were some string arrangements that he wasn’t interested in doing for people. Sometimes they’d want him to collaborate with keyboard players who’d written out parts on keyboards that he’d already orchestrated for the strings. He prefers to write from the ground up and have complete artistic control. Clare Fischer Those people who want you to do it that way don’t know what writing is about, they only know what they want. You should never work for anybody if they know what they want. Brent Fischer I, on the other hand, don’t mind collaborating with people as long as the writer is talented. I think it’s a challenge to put different peoples’ ideas together. I’d like to add a historical fact. I was talking to Oh No and Todd Simon, we were at a wonderful dinner together with all the guys from the Red Bull Music Academy. They were talking about DJing, and I think I had the line on who the first person was to mix. And it didn’t even happen in the 20th century, it happened in the 19th, and it was the composer Charles Ives. Look him up. Clare Fischer: Look under insurance [laughs]. Brent Fischer He was an insurance magnate, that’s how he made his money. But he was also a fabulous orchestral composer of the late 19th century and he had this habit where you’d hear the orchestra playing, you’d hear it at a certain tempo, and then all of a sudden it sounded like a marching band were coming from a distance. It would take over the piece - this was before faders - you’d hear that part for a while and then it would fade out and he’d go back to the other thing he was writing. Little historical fact for you there. Monk One I’m wondering if you can take us back to the album you arranged for Dizzy Gillespie and tell us what that was like. Clare Fischer First of all I worked with a lot of musicians from Detroit. One of them was Donald Byrd and he and I became very good friends. At that time there was a series of albums that had a trumpet player and strings on them, and they wanted us to do an album like that. So I wrote this album. He played the album that we did for Dizzy and when he heard that he asked me to write for him. I was so taken aback because by that time I worshipped him, being a live bebopper. Go ahead. Monk One When was this? Clare Fischer Don’t ask me times, sir. I’m older. Brent Fischer I believe it was in the early '60s, late '50s or early '60s. Monk One Was it after that point you began working with Cal Tjader? Clare Fischer My relationship with him goes way back. Years ago I worked as an accompanist with a vocal group called The Hi-Lo’s and we often did concerts that Cal Tjader's group played at. I heard his music and the type of thing it was and got to know him. It just clicked and eventually I wrote several albums for him, played on some, wrote others. Brent Fischer I remember being here in Seattle when he was on tour with Cal Tjader 28 years ago, in 1977. He brought me and my sister along, all up and down the Northwest here, and I remember that gig we did in Seattle. Some of the guys in the Northwest Symphonia were here, too, I was talking to them and they still remember it. Monk One Was it when you were working with Cal Tjader that you first began exploring Latin music? Clare Fischer Yes and no. When I was at university I roomed with a lot of Latinos. I got exposed to different varieties - Cuban music, commercial Latin, including the ones who were known at the time like Xavier Cugat. It was just something I naturally fell into. Because I was rooming with the Latinos I learned how to speak Spanish. To me it’s not just one thing. When you plunge into a culture you plunge into the complexity, the completeness of it. Monk One In the '70s I believe you started a band called [Salsa Picante]? Brent Fischer That’s now called The Clare Fischer Latin Jazz Quintet, but that was the original name. Clare Fischer: I was trying to go along with the vogue, giving everything a name, like The Beatles - Salsa Picante. Monk One Can we listen to something from that band so everyone can hear just how deeply you got into those rhythms. Clare Fischer [to Clare] You pick, I’m too old. Brent Fischer He was actually playing something on the piano from one of these albums [looks through records]. You want to hear something Latin-sounding or the thing I was talking about with the quartet? Monk One Let’s hear something Latin. Brent Fischer OK, I’m scared to touch it in case I ruin it. Let’s hear the first track from side two. Clare Fischer This is when they had sides to records. (music: Salsa Picante - Pajara Loco) Monk One: Alright. That was Pajara Loco. Clare Fischer Pa-jara loco, accent on the first syllable. Monk One Crazy bird. Brent Fischer If you notice there were some synthesizer sounds on there, those were just from an organ he had and you can get a clear example of using sounds in an orchestrational sense. He had the background pads and I believe it was because we couldn’t afford to have a string section. He would have preferred that, and then some of the different melodic things in there were where he would have preferred a clarinet… we did have a flute player in there. But we didn’t have the budget for any of the other orchestral instruments, but that’s the way he’s thinking when he’s composing. Monk One One of the things we could hear on there was the use of different keyboard textures. Starting in the '70s with the electric piano it seems like you were one of the first people to explore that sound. Can you explain what led you into that? Clare Fischer First of all, I was working in the studios in Los Angeles and it seemed no one wanted to get into that. I just loved the digital piano. Brent Fischer This is before the digital piano, this is the Fender Rhodes we’re talking about. Clare Fischer Even then we’re talking about an electronic piano. Keyboards are strange things when it comes to improvising. Some of them are improvising-friendly, some are not. When I got into an instrument where it seemed that everything just flowed on it I went for it and that’s how I got into the electronic keyboards. Monk One What was the reaction from audience? Clare Fischer I never cared. Brent Fischer I think the worst thing was he got tired of playing on substandard pianos. Clare Fischer Oh, you go from club to club. My god [look of disgust]! Brent Fischer But as long as you had a Fender Rhodes or some sort of electronic keyboard that was in shape, you had consistency. Monk One So you had the same keyboard and took it on the road with you? Clare Fischer No, but by then the Fender Rhodes was quite common. Brent Fischer Sometimes we’d have one there, sometimes we’d take our own. Clare Fischer Depending how far it was. Monk One And then, as new keyboards came out on each successive record there was a different keyboard on every album it seems, at least up until the early '80s. Clare Fischer: I did a lot of work for Yamaha. They kept coming out with things and I kept using them, that’s how I got into them. I always loved it when I was working on a session if there was someone who could program. I could play the instrument but I was never interested in getting the electronic knowledge to programme it. Monk One Let’s talk about the string arrangements you did. With Toni Braxton were you working in the studio? Brent Fischer The typical way it works, not just with Toni, is we ask them to send us something as close to what the final mix is going to be, minus the orchestra. So they’d already have the rhythm track. Clare Fischer Then he would transcribe it and I would write the arrangement to the transcription. Brent Fischer They’d send us a tape and I would take down everything note for note: the vocal line, the guitar solos, basslines, every drum beat, if there was a drum fill in there he’d want me to write it out. He likens it to fitting a jigsaw puzzle together, so if I write out everything that’s happening, every little line in the background, he can see the pieces and fit it all together. That way he doesn’t step on vocalists with one of his string or woodwind lines. Clare Fischer The fiendish thing at that time were guys who wrote over arrangements [laughs]. Brent Fischer This will make more and more sense 10, 15, 20 years from now. Monk One The fear is, in the mix, they might haul down the whole arrangement. Do you have any control over that? Clare Fischer That depends on how close you are to the people you're working with. Most of the time they have that feeling of omnipotence. It’d have to be, "Excuse me, I’m a bitcher, not just a Fischer, but a bitcher.” Finally, they got tired of me complaining and backed off and let me do what I wanted to do. There’s no sense in doing it - and this isn’t a matter of self-preoccupation or conceit - if you allow somebody to doctor your product, it’s like becoming a whore. It’s not the right thing to do. A producer thinks if he’s going to have that position, he must say something to justify that position, even if he’s got nothing to say. And boy, they are a pain in the culo. [audience laughter] Brent Fischer I can give you an example of that. Once I was taking a little holiday in Europe and he called in. He said: “I need Robert Palmer to do something, I need a transcription. And I said "where is he right now?” And he said, “He’s in Milan". So I said, "Im in Switzerland, I’ll just take the train down there.” I took it down, went to his studio, they gave me a tape, I stayed up all night writing it down. I sent it to him, he wrote the string arrangement, later on when we got the record back we found out they had changed a couple of key chord progressions at the end of the song. They were now completely different from what I had sent to him. Everything that the orchestra was based on had been obliterated toward the end, but they kept the orchestra there. So you had the orchestra set to one set of chord progressions that now weren’t there. And that didn’t seem to bother them. Clare Fischer They’re producers, not listeners. Brent Fischer It got released that way. These are some of the funny things that happen. Clare Fischer I don’t think they’re funny. Brent Fischer Strange, unusual. monk One You were mentioning the transcriptions, and before everyone came up to the hall we were listening to an old live recording of the Cal Tjader Group and after listening to the song Dr Fischer came over and played the song just from listening to what had happened. Clare Fischer That wasn’t difficult, that was my song. Brent Fischer That wasn’t your song, that was written by Dave McKay. Clare Fischer I beg your pardon. Brent Fischer The point is, to develop your ears to the point where you can hear... I liken it to how we can see colors. We can look around the room and that’s red and that’s black and so on. But not everybody has the capability to hear something and say: "That’s an E Flat major chord with a raised 9." That’s a key ability. He heard the song, understood what the notes were without actually having remembered as he’d played it 30 years ago. He was able to hear it, realise what the notes were and play it back. A working knowledge of keyboard will give you capabilities you never knew existed. They will bring out your creativity and enable you to work a lot faster when you’re trying to figure out your own material. Clare Fischer Besides that, when you start thinking of harmonic structures, I studied classical composing when I was 11 years old, got into jazz writing when I was 13 and ran into a wide variety of things, got into writing Latin jazz. That went along with my meeting the guys who spoke Spanish. It was important to me... I heard so many people write music for Latins and it seemed they didn’t have a hell of an idea what was going on. Brent Fischer Just like when you learn a foreign language you need a good accent. Clare Fischer Anyone here speak a foreign language? Brent Fischer Everybody here has English as their second language. You learn the language well and have the accent or dialect right, like speaking French the way they do in Paris rather than Montreal. Clare Fischer Damn it, either you’re listening or you’re not. Most Americans don’t listen when they hear a foreign language, they don’t get the idea of what they’re delivering. It’s faulty as hell. Sorry, I swear too much. Brent Fischer The point is, I got into many styles of ethnic music, starting out with Latin jazz and Brazilian music, and it made me realise there are certain things you have to unlearn from what you know about music to be able to deal with it from a different culture if you want it to be authentic or idiomatically correct. That makes it more comfortable to work with music from those countries and to merge music from different countries. He’d taken an old German folk song and turned it into a Latin mambo for his Latin jazz group, complete with the lyrics, he has vocalists singing in German. Later on he did it with a Japanese folk song and merged that it into a Brazilian samba. I have one here. But I think you had things you wanted to play. Clare Fischer I don’t care, you play what you want. Brent Fischer This is quite a long song so I’ll play you the first section. (music: Clare Fischer - unknown) Clare Fischer To me it’s always been very important to be doing the language that the music is written in. The record companies will fight you tooth and nail. “Oh no, it’s an American audience, they don’t understand.” Well, that’s nonsense. I put out a German number, it’s in German: ‘Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen’. My father used to sing that to me as a child. It doesn’t have an English translation to me, so it got recorded in German. They say to me: “Nobody will ever understand that.” Here I am performing down in Mexico City and they’re calling for this German song, “Du Du, play that number.” How can they be so wrong? You must get it into you head that the record companies are not going to be any smarter than you are. Follow your tastes and preferences in what you do. Don't let them browbeat you. They think they’re the commanding power, and they are, but by god, if you fight them doggedly, they’ll back off. So do it. Brent Fischer Now, he [gestures to interviewer] noticed something, he was very astute, he asked me who the singers were. These were singers we worked with in LA all these years and he coached them to sound authentically Japanese. He also said it reminded him of Singers Unlimited, and one of them was from Singers Unlimited and dad has also written for them. So, good ear. Monk One You said you write for the Hi-Lo’s and I wondered if you could tell me about vocal arranging because I imagine that must be different from symphonic arrangements. Clare Fischer Prior to working with the Hi-Lo’s I had never written any vocal arrangements. Does anybody here know the Hi-Lo’s and their leader Gene Puerling? He was their leader and arranger and he was an original. I heard their music and said: “This is interesting, it’s not just the pile of junk that most people put out.” So I got into doing it and when it comes down to it, it’s not a question of whether they can sing it or not. People can go: “Oh, we have high voices…” It’s not that, it’s whether they can hear it. If you know they have ears, you can do anything you want and you know they’ll do it well. Monk One You have to keep in mind the range of the human voice though. Clare Fischer Each person I had was unusual. The Hi-Lo’s, for instance, their lead tenor, he could sing up to the F at the top that the sopranos have. You just get used to working with people who can do it, and later on I became associated with a fellow who had been one of the members of the Hi-Lo’s. He was unusual in being able to sight-sing anything you stick in front of him, which most people can’t do. He can play woodwinds superbly, all of them. And he improvises his butt off. That’s a complete musician for me, that's what I prefer working with - somebody who knows what he’s doing. Monk One You brought up improvisation there. How do you write arrangements which take improvisation into account? Clare Fischer That depends upon the person improvising, you have to adjust for that facility. My interest in music has always been harmonic and as a result of that I get into the harmonics when I improvise. You have to flow into that, that’s like speaking a foreign language. If you’ve got those sounds down and you can express yourself in them, that’s a completely different world. Monk One Could you explain what you mean by harmonic as opposed to a melodic or rhythmic interest in it? Clare Fischer Most people know the melody and there are certain bass notes which go along with that with the harmonies. Most people aren’t awfully considerate of the harmonies and I think you have to get into those to know how a piece will go. Brent Fischer That’s something that a working knowledge of the piano will do, you can start experimenting round different combinations of notes that lead you to chord progressions. You start hearing things with your ears. Clare Fischer Most people are not used to putting things all together. When you put a player on the piano you hear the totality of the sound. The next thing comes up, you’re not writing for the piano, you have to know how to write for that. That’s important. Brent Fischer In the case of this orchestra we worked with last night, we didn’t know who was going to be able to solo in the group. Not everyone has that capability. Clare Fischer It turned out well. Brent Fischer Yeah, we left spaces in the charts where we gave chord progressions to a section, for instance, everybody in the sax section. Once we found who would take the solo we gave that to him or her, then we put the backgrounds in other sections. For instance, if there’s going to be a sax solo, then have the backgrounds in the strings with some colours in the brass parts. And if the trumpet player is going to take the solo, have the background played by the sax section or flutes and clarinet. You can write the backgrounds in, but you just leave chord progressions for the soloists and he improvises that. Monk One So the soloist’s guide is basically the chord progression? Clare Fischer: Yes, and a feeling of time. If you can’t improvise in time, then stay off. Rhythmical music is rhythmical music. If you’ve ever seen someone who doesn’t know how to dance try to get up and move around with music… Brent Fischer He knows how to dance. Monk One Well, we might ask for a demonstration later. Clare Fischer No, not at my age. Monk One You mentioned your father earlier. What type of background did he have? Clare Fischer He was a barbershop quartet-er. His raison d’etre was to write arrangements for that. There was a group called the SPEBQSA, the Society For The Preservation And Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing In America. Monk One Oh yeah, that one. Brent Fischer I’m not sure they’re still around now. Clare Fischer: Well, that doesn’t matter, it existed. My dad was crazy about that. You used to see him sit at the piano, and plunk and plunk. Brent Fischer He was basically self-taught. Clare Fischer Not basically, wholly. Brent Fischer He came up on it like myself. I always had music in my household. I used to lie under the grand piano with my dog while he was practicing or composing when I was two years old. Monk One: Lucky guy. And was your uncle also a musician? Brent Fischer His brother, my uncle. Clare Fischer I also had an uncle who was a musician, that was the first one in the family. That was from my mother’s side. But from my father’s side it was only barbershop quartets. Monk One Barbershop quartets are obviously vocal groups, so you were having the experience of hearing that? Clare Fischer Usually, when you have four male singers, you have a tenor, baritone and bass. But with the barbershop quartet the melody was in the second voice, and you had a tenor over that, so it was a matter of harmonising. Clare Fischer As you can see, my writing for this type of stuff is greatly influenced by my classical composing. You just can’t say I grew up on Duke Ellington or something. There’s Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bartok, the whole works. Those are all a very important part of my early training and exposure, they’re a part of me. Monk One What was the process for making what we just heard? Did you get the vocal track...? Brent Fischer The vocal and the other instruments that you heard on there, the bass, the little rhythm. Monk One And you transcribed that? Brent Fischer Yes, this is very sparse as far as the stuff that they send. It was just the singing, the bass and that little bit of electronic percussion that you hear there. Monk One So everything was written around that sketch you got and you would send back the recording? Did you also do the mix that we heard? Clare Fischer Not really, I expressed what I would like to have happened but you can’t be there; and again, you’re fighting with the record company. Brent Fischer Well, in this particular case there was no record company. Prince had total control, he would do the final mix. There might be an occasional time when he would ask us to mix something, but that would just be a rough mix to use as a guide, just so he would know which orchestral colours were important to my father to be brought out at that point. Monk One What do you think of Prince’s bass playing as a bassist yourself? Brent Fischer He’s a talented guy on almost any instrument. When you called Paisley Park Records and you were put on hold, you’d hear all these great records he’s recorded where he’s just playing guitar by himself, sometimes the piano. I think he has… Clare Fischer He’s sick [laughs]. Brent Fischer He has skills on every basic electronic instrument. Monk One Who are some of your influences as a bassist? I understand you’ve been developing an actual bass guitar. Brent Fischer No, I’ve been testing it and I’m going to be presenting this instrument that’s made in Germany by this bass maker. It’s a completely new design. My main influence on electric bass is Jeff Berlin, but he plays just a standard four string. I got interested in six string later on because there are so many more chordal and range possibilities. On a six string I can cover more or less two-thirds of the piano whereas a four string has a much smaller area of the range. Clare Fischer There are certain times when, with that many strings he plays just like a guitarist, strumming chords. Brent Fischer You have a lot more possibilities that way. But this man I discovered in Germany, there’s a company called Frameworks Guitars, and they made these guitars with just the shape or the outline without having the body filled in, so it’s very lightweight, it’s good for travel and it’s collapsible, so it packs up neatly. And the man who worked for that company then made his own company called Contour Bass and he has designed a similar style bass and it’s also collapsible. It weighs four pounds, approximately two kilos, which is about one quarter of the weight of a normal bass, so it saves me probably $2,000 a year on chiropractor bills for my shoulder, neck and back. It’s really easy to travel with. You have the DVD up and ready? Monk One Yeah, this is the DVD. Brent Fischer This is the demo. (video: Brent Fischer plays Frameworks Bass) Clare Fischer I’ve never seen this. Brent Fischer Actually, you have. This is the framework itself, that’s the body part. It just screws in and then there’s the top body part. Those are acoustic resonating chambers so it works as an acoustic instrument. [Brent Fischer demonstrates playing on the DVD] Clare Fischer Now you have to ask yourself the question, how does a bass player come up learning how to play like that? That’s all improvising. Excuse me, I use the musical term, he’s a bitch. Monk One How about genius? Clare Fischer I use the other. Monk One Amazing. So we don’t have a lot of time left and one of the things I’d love to hear, and I think everybody else would, is some playing, some solo piano. We heard a little bit of it yesterday. Brent Fischer Does anyone have any questions before we do that? Otherwise we can wrap this up. Clare Fischer I don’t have to play the piano, it’s been interesting the way it is. Brent Fischer Why don’t you play, you were doing minor sides before, do you want to do that? Clare Fischer Oh, my goodness. Brent Fischer OK, which ever one you want to do. Monk One Anything you play will be good. (music: Clare Fischer plays electric piano / applause) Clare Fischer Thank you very much. I have to express something at this point. Usually, when you get someone who is a jazz pianist, if he plays sophisticated harmonic stuff, he’s not very good at the blues, or if he plays the blues, he’s not very good at the sophisticated stuff. I spent all of my teenage years working in a black club with a black group. I learnt how to play the blues so I added all that to my thing and I feel a lot more complete because of it. End of lesson. Monk One Are you still performing these days with your group. Clare Fischer: Not as often as I would like to. You almost have to go out and create your own gigs, nobody calls you. I mostly write these days. Monk One If anyone has any questions this is the time. Audience member I have a question about Columbo. I know you said you did the theme song for it, but I also notice the show would have a lot of really rousing pieces throughout it... Brent Fischer He wasn’t one of the writers on them but he played most of the keyboard parts you hear in the background. Audience member I shouldn’t share my secrets with all the sample heads in the room, but go and watch Columbo. If you’re into samples, it’s great stuff. Monk One You just brought up an interesting point about sampling. Has your music been sampled that you know of? Brent Fischer Well, certainly last night. Monk One Yes, but as far as receiving royalties for sampling. Clare Fischer Oh, forget about royalties, don’t think about earning money. Brent Fischer We have clearances with Harry Fox Agency and they send us contracts. Every once in a while as a new medium that becomes available and they send us forms to fill out. If you order a Clare Fischer song to be your ringtone on your mobile phone, we’ll get 10c or something for that. Clare Fischer I don’t remember that. Monk One So you’re not composing for ringtones nowadays [laughs], arranging for cell phones? We’ll get into that the next time you come, I’m sure. Anybody else? I’d like to thank you very much, it’s been a great pleasure. Clare Fischer My pleasure. [applause]