Fairy Tales by Jeffrey Fisher

In 2006, Fisher was commissioned to compose several ballet pieces for the San Gorgonio Ballet’s world premiere of “Hans Christian Andersen: A Storybook Come to Life.” His ballets for “The Red Shoes,” “Thumbelina,” and “The Little Mermaid” are to be performed by the Company at Palm Springs’ Annenberg Theater in October 2006. Fisher produced a CD of the ballet music, geared to both children and adults, to be sold via various websites and as digital downloads.

Prior to working with the San Gorgonio Ballet, Fisher spent over a decade immersed in the art, music and theater world of Taos, New Mexico. During that time, he merged his music and theater backgrounds as Musical Director for “A Christmas Carol” at the Taos Children’s Theater. His life in Taos also provided outlets for Fisher’s love of art and performing; by day, he owned a local art gallery, and by night he performed music at local venues such as the Sad Café and the historic Plaza Hotel. Fisher was a founding member of the reknowned Evidence Quartet, which steadily played jazz in Taos and popularized the music of Thelonius Monk. He also had the honor of perfoming with jazz great Frank Morgan and Spanish music legend Antonio Apodaca during that period.

In the mid-1990s, Fisher founded his recording label -- Healing Music of the Southwest -- and recorded six albums of neo-classical music for healing and massage background. A particularly notable album -- “Triumph of the Spirit” -- was composed as a collaboration with the painter Charles Collins, to accompany his visionary paintings. Promotion for that album, released in 1996, led Fisher back to his love of traveling and playing music at shows and festivals across the U.S.

On tour, he revisited many of the towns he had seen as a musician and beatnik poet in the 1970s, following his theatrical studies at Pomona College and NYU’s School of the Performing Arts. Back then, he had gained experience on New York’s “off” and “off-off” Broadway scene and at summer stock as composer, director, stage carpenter and scenic artist for everything from light shows to major opera companies before hitting the road. Along the way, he met multitudes of accomplished musicians. The musical education Fisher had received as a child -- on piano, trumpet, French horn, euphonium, drums, percussion, bassoon and saxophone -- was underscored in adulthood with advanced study in piano, percussion, vibraphone, composing, arranging and film scoring. But such formal training served merely as the foundation for what he considers his true music education, studying with the musicians and composers he met on the road from New York to San Francisco, Taos and Southern California.

Over the past thirty years, he developed a reputation around the country as an innovative and talented musician, playing in such diverse groups as Trio Jalapeno and the Evidence Quartet, Achyutan, the Charles Connally Texas Blues Band, the Frank Morgan Quartet, folksinger Sun-Day Martinez, Fred Marshall's Delta 9 and Dope Wash. He has performed in cities from San Francisco to Buffalo, New York, at the Las Vegas (New Mexico) Peoples' Faire, the Monterey Rota Crystal Festival, San Francisco's Herbst Theatre, the Palace Hotel, the Sad Cafe and the Taos Inn. In time, he developed a particular affinity for string bass and piano, and is the doting owner of a 1959 Steinway that has traveled the country with him via flatbed truck and mobile home. There is also a lovely string bass from 1848 France that survived the wrath of an ex-wife, and took six years to restore to its current glory.

It can be said that, throughout his storied career, composition has been Fisher’s greatest love. He consistently composed music for a plethora of vocal and jazz groups, and for his own solo performances. It was in Taos that Fisher was commissioned to compose a symphonic tone poem, a woodwind symphony and a string quartet; to date, his collected compositions include works for orchestra, string quartet, marching band, jazz and vocal arrangements, piano, string bass and woodwind ensemble. Recently, in Southern California, he has performed solo concerts of his own compositions at Edward-Dean Museum & Gardens, as well as other venues.

Currently, Fisher is focused on composing specifically for ballet, the Hans Christian Andersen-inspired pieces being his first full-length ballets to be performed. Active promotion of the accompanying CD is underway, and may lead to a series of live promotional appearances in 2007.

Fisher attributes his ability to maintain his ongoing flow of inspiration and productivity to living a balanced life with integrity. He is a working man’s composer, valuing physical work and eschewing creature comforts or distractions when necessary. He bucked hay for a living upon arriving in New Mexico and built a house off the grid (solar energy only) in a canyon in the San Jacinto Mountains; he now channels his physical energy into practicing and teaching Ta’i Chi Chu’an, as well as, Reiki and Reflexology. As a writer, he is the author of a book on Chinese philosophy and martial arts, titled Tai Chi Basics, and five volumes of poetry. He lives quietly in his canyon with his wife,Nancy, four hens, a mean rooster and a teenager.

For more information or interviews, contact: Jeffrey Fisher jf.riverworld@yahoo.com; 951-236-9981

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