Later Years: Jazz Inspiration and Pop Arranger
Since 1985 Fischer wrote orchestral arrangements for pop artist Prince. Some appeared on Prince's albums and have been used for his movies Under the Cherry Moon (Fischer's first screen credit), Graffiti Bridge and in Spike Lee's Girl 6. One of Fischer's Prince arrangements was also used in a revised form for the movie Batman. Prince's December 2005 single "Te Amo Corazon," a mid-tempo Latin jazz track, featured string arrangements by Fischer.
More recently, as a jazz educator, Fischer performed solo piano concerts and conducted clinics and master classes in universities and music conservatories in Europe and throughout the United States. In 1995 Just Me came out, a Concord Jazz CD with Fischer on solo piano. Featuring his Latin-jazz group and six singers, now referred to as "Clare Fischer & Friends", a JVC Music CD was released in 1997 called Rockin' In Rhythm.
Two gifted Dutch jazz pianists, Cor Bakker and Bert van den Brink, recorded the homage DeClared (1993) which contains nine Fischer compositions. Five years later recordings made in 1991 and 1997 with The Netherlands Metropole Orchestra led by Rob Pronk and Vince Mendoza came out as The Latin Side. Another notable recent CD with Clare is a re-issue of Art Pepper's Tokyo Debut on Galaxy (1995).
Fischer continued to write for Prince and many other renowned artists including Michael Jackson before his death, Amy Grant, Brazilian artist João Gilberto (João), Paula Abdul, Natalie Cole and more recently Chaka Khan and Branford Marsalis.
With his commercial work Fischer financed a costly band of twenty brass instruments, called "Clare Fischer's Jazz Corps". The recordings of this band contain an interesting arrangement of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado". "The death of my friend Tom Jobim has affected me deeply. Like me he was 68, and I am still alive. After he died I had a dream in which I was conducting his 'Corcovado'. Only it was not a normal version, there were these harmonic countermelodies in the bass. When I awoke I wrote down what I had dreamed. It became Jobim's In Memoriam, a piece I called 'Corcovado Fúnebre.'"
One of Fischer's last projects in his own name was a recording with Brazilian guitarist Hélio Delmiro called "Symbiosis" which has been released on a "Clare Fischer Productions" recording as has his Clare Fischer's Jazz Corps recording.
In December 1999, Michigan State University School of Music conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts Degree on Fischer in recognition of his "creativity and excellence as a jazz composer, arranger and performer".
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