{{{Keyboard Online and Magazine article features Clare Fischer. Full of information on his techniques, lessons, an inteview and MP3 downloads of his musical ideas and workings! Great article!

For those that don't know who Clare Fischer is or what his contributions to Prince's music, he's the one behind all those fantastic, beautiful orchestra arrangements in many of Prince's best work. Considered as one of the world's great arrangers.

In fact, Prince loves his contributions and music so much that he refuses to meet Clare Fischer in person or even talk to him fearing it will jinx the relationship! (I read that in Uptown if I remember correctly)}}}

Unfortunately there's only a one mention of Prince in the article:
"He is known to the music world in the States mostly from his incredible orchestral arrangements for pop artists of every imaginable stripe, from the Hi-Los to Prince."

Keyboard homepage link: http://www.KeyboardOnline.com/

Article webpage: http://www.KeyboardOnline...15,00.html

Clare Fischer musical arrangement contributions can be heard on:
• The Family - few songs, one of my favorites is the beginning and break of Desire and Scream of Passion (long version shows how combining Funk and a full orchestra can create some incredible music!)
• Parade - all over the album! Especially the B-Side Alexa De Paris!
• Crystal Ball (1986-7) - On Expert Lover
• Graffiti Bridge - Question Of U ( I think) and others.
• Jill Jones!
• Batman - The Future
• Many others...

I'm just naming these off the top of my head. If anyone wants to create and contribute a complete (clean and acccurate) list of songs that feature Clare Fischer music, please do in this thread.

It would be greatly appreciated I'm sure by veteran Prince fans and new fans who use the org for research.

Now *this* is useful! Looked for such things in ages.

I love clare, but I thought clare was a girl?

Clare is a man and he most definately met with Prince on many occasions. I even think there is a picture of him with Prince on the set of the Diamonds and Pearls video shoot in some mag like SPIN or Vibe or something.

Clare Fischer musical arrangement contributions can be heard on:
• The Family - few songs, one of my favorites is the beginning and break of Desire and Scream of Passion (long version shows how combining Funk and a full orchestra can create some incredible music!)
• Parade - all over the album! Especially the B-Side Alexa De Paris!
• Crystal Ball (1986-7) - On Expert Lover
• Graffiti Bridge - Question Of U ( I think) and others.
• Jill Jones!
• Batman - The Future
• Many others...

Yeah, and let's not forget
"Old Friends 4 Sale (The Vault)
"The Sun, The Moon And Stars", "Man O War" (RU2TJF)
"Until Ure In My Arms Again", "The One" (New Power Soul)
The "Come 2 My House"-CD (Chaka Khan)
"With This Kiss" (Celine Dion)
and of course "Kamasutra".
Boy, I love those strings!

Dauphin said:

That would really surprise me, since Clare himself just recently told the story of him not meeting Prince (this was in 1999 or something). I do think they might have spoken on the phone.

Prince misspelling Clare for Claire (the one-single) doesn't help the 'I thought he was female'-debate. That really annoys me, if Prince is so perfectionist, why doesn't he get peoples names right in booklets? (GCS2000 is really bad)

Another puzzle is the naming of the NPG orchestra. Everytime Clare is asked to contribute, the NPG orchestra gets the credit, while it's Clare's orchestra doing the playing. And then you got Kamasutra, which is credited to the NPG orchestra, but is all synthesizer. Can anyone shed some light?

I thought that Clare was saying that when they do arrangements they do not come into contact other then do the mail thing. dammit, now I'm going to have to look it all up.

Well, actually the 'Clare Fischer Orchestra' is just a pickup orchestra, random session musicians being called in to perform on a recording. I don't think Clare Fischer would have the time and means to keep an entire orchestra going. But I guess it adds a little flavor to a project to give it a name like that.

Clare Fischer worked with the great Joao Gilberto in the 60s.
There is something i like a lot about Clare...he has personality. Usually the orchestra contributions to rock/pop artists are only background for their voices. With Prince, they actually COLLABORATED, and it makes a huge difference. Good examples are ´Crystal Ball´, ´The One´ and ´Pink Cashmere´

How did Prince find out about Clare and start using him to arrange strings on his songs? Word of mouth, or what? From whom? Clare added "a lot" to Prince's music, and I always thought he was an excellent choice -- but how did Prince know about him?

soulsplash said:

I understand that one of David Z's contacts put them together during the final mix of The Family project. This is according to UPTOWN.