Violist Jason Fisher is a founding member and co-artistic director of A Far Cry. A child of the Northwest, Jason grew up in Seattle and is a proud enthusiast of rainy days. He first picked up an instrument at age 11 in elementary school when the orchestra teacher told him they needed “somebody to play the viola.” Jason went on to study with Helen Callus, Victoria Chiang, Katherine Murdock, and Roger Tapping, and is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music.
A Carnegie Hall Fellow and a Peabody Singapore Fellow, he has toured Europe, Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic and has given concerts at Vienna Musikverein, Singapore Esplanade, The Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. Jason has performed with Pink Martini, Jake Shimabukuro, Itzakh Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa, and with members of the Florestan Trio, and the Æolus, Brentano, Cleveland, Emerson, Mendelssohn, and St. Lawrence String Quartets.
Principal violist of Boston Baroque, Jason plays period viola with the Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, The English Concert, ACRONYM Ensemble, The Thirteen, Sound Salon, Teatro Nuovo, Three Notch'd Road, Opera Lafayette, Relic, and The Sarasa Ensemble. He has spent recent summers on viola and viola d'amore at the Staunton Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and the Aston Magna Music Festival. Jason is on viola faculty at The Rivers School Conservatory where he also serves as Director of the Chamber Music Lab. He is the Artistic Program Lead for Portland Summer Ensembles, a chamber music workshop for advanced-level teenagers in Oregon. Jason plays on an English viola by Richard Duke, 1768, and a recently commissioned copy of that instrument in period setup by Timothy Johnson.
