On Saturday night, I wrapped up the final interview for my "Parade" documentary. We begin editing this week and my understanding is that it will be broadcast on the 1st May. Anyway, I'll be making a thread for that shortly.

The final interview was with Brent Fischer - son and manager of Clare Fischer. Clare was also present, but as Brent said "at 82 years old, he's a man of few words, and at 46 I am a man of many" so I was mostly talking to Brent.

Anyway - Brent told me that something like 70% of the work they've done with Prince has never been released, which is a much higher number than I had thought.

Thought you guys might be interested to hear that!

Anyway, stay tuned, I'll be making a thread regarding the final status and airing of the documentary very soon.

Nice fact , still very curious about the documentary.... I think it's gonna be awesome

Well, I'm afraid we already knew that.

And for a proof, you have the I Wonder U Session shared a few years ago (as snatched from a Clare Fisher & Son sort of conference).

In the never-before-heard versions of the track you can find a wealth of wind arrangements (especially reeds) who were later dumped by Prince. Fisher himself explained he was heavily influenced by the likes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

And, apart from Parade, we know he used many of Fischer orchestrations that were lying in the vault.

He inserted the strings from Crystal Ball on The Future, when he had no plans at the time to release the former.

And I don't think Fisher was re-hired for the intro to Te Amo Corazón. He must've lifted it from existing unreleased arrangements.

I didn't specifically ask about "Te Amo Corazon", but Brent says Prince calls them up every 2 years or so to work on tracks. Clare and Brent also did the arrangement for the 2004 Grammy performance with Beyonce.

But are there really NEW contributions or lifted from the vault?

IIRC, the songs from Parade included on UTCM keep a bigger amount of Fischer's orchestrations than the album. I can't tell for sure since I watched the film many years ago (and still awake shouting in the middle of the night, so I'm not watching it again anytime soon ).

I really love Fischer's work. Last week I was listening to The Jackson's Destiny for the first time in years, and the second track 'Push Me Away' had those really cinematic lush strings, and I thought "that has to be Clare Fischer" - and sure enough I looked it up on discogs and it was. Really distinstinctive work, I just love it.

[Edited 4/18/11 8:44am]

vitriol said:

But are there really NEW contributions or lifted from the vault?

IIRC, the songs from Parade included on UTCM keep a bigger amount of Fischer's orchestrations than the album. I can't tell for sure since I watched the film many years ago (and still awake shouting in the middle of the night, so I'm not watching it again anytime soon ).

Yeah, the score does have more stuff, and they said a lot of things were done specifically for the score. Brent told an anecdote about Clare wanting to see a scene from the movie in order to make the arrangement suit what was happening on the scene, and a purple limosine showed up outside, the driver came to the door and said he had specific instructions to place the tape in the hands of Clare Fischer.... then Clare and Brent watched the scene together and then started working on the music.

To me, it sounded like he meant new contributions. If he was just lifting old stuff - then I doubt he'd call them up to discuss it.

Yeah Noveau, it is distinctive! And that's a great album. Brent had also mentioned working with the Jacksons, but as the documentary I'm making right now is on "Parade" obviously I can't include it in this one. There's actually a bunch of great content that won't be used that I'd like to do something with. Both the interview with Brent/Clare, and Dr Fink were 35-40 minutes long apiece, and the documentary is 1-hour long and has at least 8 or 9 contributors.

So glad you were able to talk to him/them. Clare did, after all, "make brighter the colours black and white".

Can't wait!

[EDIT: I also hope Dr. Fink talks a lot about his own parts on the album. This just struck me the other day: I can hear Lisa all over the place, but I have trouble finding the Dr. in the mix.]

[Edited 4/18/11 10:16am]

NouveauDance said:

I really love Fischer's work. Last week I was listening to The Jackson's Destiny for the first time in years, and the second track 'Push Me Away' had those really cinematic lush strings, and I thought "that has to be Clare Fischer" - and sure enough I looked it up on discogs and it was. Really distinstinctive work, I just love it.

[Edited 4/18/11 8:44am]

What a surprise!

Whilst neither The Jacksons nor MJ (even less!) are exactly my cup of tea, I happen to love that track and those strings.

I'm looking forward to the documentary.