Performing with the Shelly Berg Trio

Dr. Lou Fischer is professor of music, jazz activities coordinator and jazz ensemble director at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches theory and arranging, and directs the Big Band. He is currently in his second term as U.S. representative and executive board member for the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), having served as past-president of the Ohio chapter as well as serving in other capacities.

As a Yamaha performing artist, exclusively playing the Silent Bass, Lou has been an extremely active performer in the entertainment industry for more than 42 years, having performed for over 2,000 television commercials and more than 50 Broadway shows. He toured worldwide with The Crusaders, Airto, and Emmy Lou Harris, as well as the orchestras of Woody Herman, Louis Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Tex Beneke and Jimmy Dorsey, among many others.

Lou currently has four international album releases under his own name as bandleader and has performed on more than 200 recordings. He is also featured on All Things Are New (Beaux J Poo Boo); The Manne We Love: Gershwin Revisited (Steve Houghton), A Time for Love and Bone-I-fied (Bill Watrous), The Joy (Shelly Berg), A Miracle (The Frank Mantooth Big Band), and High Wire (Sunny Wilkinson).

With a 12-day tour in Australia scheduled for July 2007, Lou has appeared as a performer, clinician and/or director at jazz festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, England, Holland, Canada, Japan, Korea, Great Britain, Scandinavia and Mexico – as well as at more than 300 high schools and universities across the United States. He recently conducted the all-state jazz ensembles of Texas, North Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Colorado and Louisiana. As faculty at various camps and the IAJE Teacher Training Institutes, “Dr. Lou” is currently jazz division head for the Bands of America Summer Symposium.

A music publisher for 13 years, Lou now publishes his compositions with Walrus Music, He is co-author of Rhythm Section Workshop for Jazz Band Directors (Alfred), Stylistic Etudes in the Jazz Idiom (Hal Leonard), and is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Educators Journal and The Instrumentalist regarding jazz pedagogy. As a composer, Lou has penned commissions for the jazz ensembles of Louisiana Tech, Illinois Wesleyan and Ball State University, and has completed a four-movement symphonic work titled Shades of Winter, premiered in 2003 by the Capital-Bexley Community Orchestra.

A former member of the internationally recognized University of North Texas One O'clock Lab Band, Fischer earned a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance, magna cum laude, and a master’s degree in composition with honors from the University of Denver. He holds a Doctor of Arts degree in bass performance, with a secondary in theory and composition from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

Lou Fischer and the Shelly Berg Trio are also leading a student Rhythm Section Clinic for the Elkhart Jazz Festival on Saturday morning.