Clare Fischer

In 1997, we recorded a piece entitled Neophonic for my father ‘s group called The Clare Fischer Jazz Corps. The instrumentation was 7 woodwinds with multiple doubles on various members of the sax, flute and clarinet families, 4 french horns, 2 alto bugles, 3 mellophones, 2 marching trombones, 2 marching baritone horns, baritone bugle, helicon tuba, contrabass bugle, piano, bass, drums, vibraphone and orchestra bells (I played these last two instruments besides contracting the album).

This was an adaptation of the work Stan Kenton had commissioned from him in the 1960s entitled Piece for Soft Brass, Woodwinds and Percussion. It was an extremely busy time in both of their careers and, while my father had plenty of time to write this monumental epic work, the record company and concert promoters did not allow enough time for Kenton to adequately rehearse it. That coupled with the inevitable pressure that goes with a tightly packed schedule led to this recollection of the premiere by my father:

“The night of the concert at The Music Center Auditorium in Los Angeles, Stan counted it off 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 it off too slowly.”

Needless to say, no one was happy with the quality of the recording. Tight studio hours meant there was no going back and getting a better take. The work was left off of Kenton’s next album. My father further recalled:

“Years later when Stan created his ‘The Creative World of Stan Kenton’ record company, (the previous company he had been signed to) was so angry that he had left them and released everything that they had in the can to jeopardize his market. My piece was released with the first third cut off.”

So my dad had to let it go for a while, knowing that his work had never gotten a good performance or recording. That is, until he saved up enough money to record it himself without interference from any company. He stated in his album liner notes for his Jazz Corp album:

“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. Talk about a delayed gratification!”

So a part of the grand Stan Kenton legacy also lives on in the work of Dr. Clare Fischer. We had many occasions during my father’s final years to perform the Neophonic piece live and I still continue to perform it today when I can afford to hire 30 musicians, although I will eventually re-orchestrate it to fit my big band instrumentation of “only” 19 musicians.

Brent Fischer
Grammy®-winning Producer, Composer, Arranger - www.BrentFischer.com
Director of the Clare Fischer Ensembles - www.ClareFischer.com