About Us
Classical guitarist Vernon Fischer's love
affair with the guitar began over fifty years ago when
he pulled his uncles old arch top guitar from behind an overstuffed
chair in the living room of his grandmother's home in Baltimore
Maryland and has had a guitar in his hand ever since only putting it
down to learn to play the mandolin, bass, banjo, ukulele,
drums and hand percussion, harmonica, keyboards and fiddle. Music
has been not only a passion but a way of life for him. Self taught, he
started his professional career by playing in dance bands for
teen clubs and junior high school dances in his early teens in the mid
sixties moving on to play in top forty show bands in the
Washington DC and Baltimore area in the early to mid seventies. The
late seventies and eighties saw him playing in jazz, old time and
British Isles bands for dances and night clubs in the Baltimore and Charlottesville
area where he had relocated to as well as teaching full time at
local music stores and at Piedmont Virginia Community College.
Along the way he studied extensively with jazz guitarists
and recording artists Emily Remler-Concord Records, Walt Namuth of
The Buddy Rich Band, jazz guitarist Larry Correll, Tim Reynolds with The
Dave Mathews Band and did workshops with John Zaradin, Christopher
Parkening, David Brandon, Chet Atkins, Jim Hall, Pat Matheney, Albert
Lee, Leo Kotke and Lee Ritenour. He performed with internationally known
artists such as fiddle great Vassar Clements, folk musician John
McCutcheon, Irish piper Paddy Keenan and classical guitarist John
Zarradin. In the mid nineties his skill with the classical guitar
earned him the full time position as house musician at Sir
Bernard Ashley's Keswick Hall which he held for over four years after
which he relocated to Charlottesville's prestigious Farmington
Country Club for a three and a half year tenure in a similar
capacity. From Farmington he returned to Keswick Hall under the
ownership of the Orient Express for another two and a half year run. Over
the past forty years he also performed for numerous
wedding ceremonies, receptions, dances, dinners and corporate events.
Vern's interest in the guitar has led him to acquire and play
many of the most popular models of guitars playing styles
appropriate for that type of guitar that include Classical,
Jazz, Bossa Nova, Steel String Finger Style, Rock and
Roll, Country, Old Time, Blue Grass, Blues, Ragtime and folk Music. His
style is melodic and reminiscent of guitarists Charlie
Byrd, Earl Klugh, Emily Remler and Kenny Burrell who greatly
influenced him.
While at music festivals in the late
eighties and working at the Outer banks of North Carolina in the
early nineties he began to sing and play the guitar as a means to get
more work and as a result his first CD Island Dreams and
Fantasies was recorded in 2005. He cites Johnny Rivers, Jimmy
Buffet, Bill Haley, The Moody Blues, Roger Whitaker and The
Classics Four as his vocal inspiration. He can fill the
dance floor with his enthusiastic renditions of Rock
and Roll hits.
Working solo and with seasoned
professional musicians he has provided music for countless weddings,
receptions, concerts, banquets, dances and corporate events at
hotels, country clubs and The University of Virginia for more
than twenty eight years in the Charlottesville Virginia area. He has
performed for heads of state that included a president, prime
minister, queen, ambassador, governors, senators and congressmen,
sports figures, movie and music stars.
