Biography:

Günther Fischer was born on June 23, 1944, in Teplitz-Schönau, Germany (now Teplice, Czech Republic). After training as a music teacher at the Robert Schumann Konservatorium in Zwickau, East Germany, from 1960 to 1963, Fischer studied clarinet, saxophone, composition and arranging at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from 1965 to 1969, where he also taught composition and arranging in the 1970s.

Fischer has been professionally active for five decades and is one of Germany’s most productive composers. His oeuvre ranges from modern jazz, to soul, to rock. In 1967, he founded his first jazz band and has toured internationally since then. His music became an East German export success, which earned him a permanent visa allowing him to travel and work in Austria, Switzerland, West Germany, Sweden and other countries west of the Iron Curtain, even before the Wall came down in 1989. Fischer has shared the stage with many East German jazz stars, including Manfred Krug, Veronika Fischer and Uschi Brüning, and has performed with international jazz stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Charlie Mariano and Tom O’Hare. He has also collaborated with Oscar-nominated actor and singer Armin Mueller-Stahl since the late 1960s; they released their CD Es gibt Tage… (There Are Days…) in 2010 and have been touring with this program.

Fischer has written countless film scores and songs for feature films, documentaries and television. As a freelance composer, he wrote music for over eighty DEFA film productions from the early 1970s to 1990; these films span all genres, including Westerns, comedies, sci-fi and children’s films. He has worked with many internationally-known directors, including Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer, Roland Gräf, Thomas Brasch, Bernhard Wicki, Andreas Dresen and Bernhard Sinkel.

Fischer composed “Come Between the Lights,” the unforgettable title song in the East German cult movie Solo Sunny (1979, dirs. Konrad Wolf, Wolfgang Kohlhaase), sung by Regine Doberschütz. In the late 1970s, Fischer was also invited to set lyrics to music for the West German feature film Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (dir. David Hemmings). This film—set in Berlin after the Great War—featured Marlene Dietrich’s last screen appearance and brought together an outstanding international cast, including David Bowie, Curd Jürgens, Kim Novak, Erika Pluhar, Sydne Rome and Maria Schell. After these two smash hits, he wrote the theme music for Ted Post’s crime film Nightkill, with stars Robert Mitchum and Jaclyn Smith in the leading roles.

Fischer’s compositions have been released on many CDs, including a three-CD set with his most important film, pop and jazz hits (2007). Fischer’s daughter, the singer Laura Fischer, joined Günther Fischer & Band in 2010. Together they recorded the CD Günther Fischer & Weimarer Staatskapelle – Live in Weimar (2015).

Günther Fischer has also written the musicals Jack the Ripper (1989) and Marilyn (1992), as well as music for ballet, opera and theater plays at the Deutsches Theater, Vienna Burgtheater and Schauspielhaus Zurich. He lives in both Germany and Ireland.

[See also: guenther-fischer.com]

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