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Clare Fischer (born October 22, 1928 in Durand, Michigan) is an American composer, arranger, pianist and organist.
His parents were of German, French, Irish-Scot, and English backgrounds. In grade school he started his general music study with violin and piano as his first instruments. At the age of 7 he began to pick out four-part harmony on the piano. After two years of piano lessons the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where 12-year-old Clare began composing classical music and making instrumental arrangements for dance bands.
At South High School he took up cello, clarinet and saxophone. His high school instructor, Glenn Litton, took an interest in the boy and, because the family could not afford it, gave him free lessons in music theory, harmony, and orchestration. He started his own band at 15, for which he wrote all the arrangements. After graduating in 1946, he began undergraduate studies in 1947 at Michigan State University, majoring in music composition and theory, and studying with H. Owen Reed. During his teens there were no funds for him to study piano, so he was mostly self-taught. Therefore his major instrument in college was cello, and piano a minor. Later he changed his major to piano and minor in clarinet.
Fischer graduated in 1951 with a B.M., cum laude, and began his first year of graduate work in composition. The U.S. Army drafted him the next year, sending him to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training. There he played alto saxophone in the band and ended his service as an arranger at the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point, N.Y. After the army, Clare returned to Michigan State. In 1955 he received his Master of Music.
Next Clare was living in Detroit, Michigan, where after a concert he offered his duties to the vocal quartet The Hi-Lo's. For five years he was pianist and arranger for this group. He wrote his first vocal arrangements and recorded several albums as pianist and sometime vocal and instrumental arranger. |