Brandt Fisher

Visual/Performing Arts

• College of Arts and Sciences, Honors College
• Music Performance in saxophone with an emphasis in jazz
• WSU Pullman
• Edmonds, Washington

Involvement

WSU Jazz Big Band; SaxBand; Saxophone Quartet; Latin Ensemble; vice president of the WSU Jazz Society; Presser Scholar Award; President’s Honor Roll; Phase 1 Scholarship; top university saxophone soloist at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival for three years in a row; intern at the Edmonds Woodway Jazz Colony Summer Camp for three summers; camp counselor/instructor at the Edmonds School District Summer Music School for four summers; and Student Entertainment Board concert committee member

Favorite WSU experience

As a freshman and sophomore, I was part of a band led by Raul Blanco called Jazz Wires. When I came to WSU as a freshman, I didn’t know anyone. But this grad student, Raul—he’s originally from Cuba—wanted to put together a jazz group and invited me to be part of it. During the two years he was here, we just created a great family within the band. We played venues in Moscow and Pullman, including Rico’s, and recorded three albums of original music in the WSU recording studio. This year, I applied for some funding for my senior recital and capstone project, and I was able to purchase plane tickets for Raul, who now lives in Houston, and Noah Austin, who’s in Nashville doing a doctorate. The band hadn’t played together in two years. In early April, we all met up in the studio and recorded part of my recital. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but the stars aligned. Luckily, we were able to go into separate rooms in the studio and safely record about an hour of music. We also played at Rico’s together again. My freshman and sophomore years, we played there a lot—probably every other week. It was Rico’s first live music in over a year.

Most of all in this pandemic, I miss playing music in the same room with other people. I miss the feeling of interacting in the moment. We’ve been doing projects in the School of Music where we record our parts separately, send them in virtually, and then they assemble it. But I’m excited to get to the point when we can play music together in person regularly.

Future plans

My future plans were interrupted because of COVID. I was initially going to apply to graduate school for music education or music performance. For now, I’m going to move back to Edmonds and work for the summer and maybe a semester. However, I’ll be preparing for graduate school in the near future. I’m hoping to go to New York or Chicago on an assistantship or fellowship. After that, I would like to come back to the Pacific Northwest and teach saxophone, jazz, and music theory as a professor. I feel inspired by my WSU mentor, Horace Alexander Young, to be training and supporting young musicians.