Apparent Enlightenment Jeffrey Fisher's 'Fairy Tales' disappoints PATRIC STANDFORD Two Birds Flying    TBF 2007

If you are enthused by a practitioner of Ta'i Chi Chu'an and Reiki healing who is also an instructor in those disciplines, an artist, poet and author, traveller, double bass player and jazz pianist, composer of healing music, who apparently lives in a trailer with neither electricity nor running water but with spectacular scenic views of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, then Jeffrey Allan Fisher is your man. If you are, however, just a musician, then you may perhaps have some difficulty in appreciating the technical virtues of the scores Fisher has created for a Hans Christian Andersen ballet, commissioned by the San Gorgonio Ballet and performed at the Annenberg Theatre in Palm Springs last autumn.

The CD, performed and produced by Fisher on his own label, presents thirteen tracks created to accompany scenes from the stories Inchellina, Red Shoes and The Mermaid with music very simple, naïve [listen -- track 2, 0:00-0:35], not particularly imaginative, not at all ingenuous, and probably highly appealing to younger children who would be taken to a jolly, rural and undemanding pantomime [listen -- track 12, 0:36-1:34].

There are moments of apparent enlightenment when some material rises above the mundane [listen -- track 7, 0:00-1:10] but sadly it is short-lived, and the total overall impression is of a well-intentioned and harmless dilettante occupying some of his leisure time in an efficient studio. The only danger would be in taking it all too seriously [listen -- track 4, 0:26-1:29].

For help listening to the sound extracts here, please refer to our questions & answers page.

Record Box is Music & Vision's regular series of shorter CD reviews