Linda Fisher

Linda Fisher was an American electronic musician and composer. Fisher sought to position the synthesizer—which she learned to use in the late ‘60s from its inventor, Bob Moog—as an instrument to be used towards varied ends, as opposed to as a frontier, necessarily superior to other instruments in its technological novelty. She saw this distinction as coded by gender difference, at times commenting on the masculinity latent in the latter position. Fisher was also an early member of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company (MMPMC), along with David Borden and Steve Drews. MMPMC, founded in 1968 by Borden, was an all-synthesizer ensemble that first played pieces by composers such as Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich before drawing minimalist themes such as repetition and counterpoint into their own compositions. Fisher has performed three times at The Kitchen, twice with Composers Inside Electronics—in a 1975 version of David Tudor’s “Rainforest," (later "Rainforest IV") and in 1977 to do her own piece “Solo Synthesizer Music”—as well as individually in 1991 when she played her work “Songs about scientists, inventors, etc.”