Composer

2006 promo shot. Please give photo credit to Harold Shapiro.

Jeff Fuller has cut a broad swath as a composer for at least 50 years. Beginning to make marks on music paper at an early age, he began composing instrumental pieces for piano using large swatches of chordal harmony. His adventures as a performer of jazz and rock during the 60's and following, led him to compose or co-compose songs, tunes, arrangements and re-harmonizations for the groups he was playing with. Excerpts of some these pieces can be heard in the Audio Clips page on this website in MP3 format.

A native son of Connecticut, Fuller holds a master's degree in Composition from Yale University, and is widely respected as a teacher and clinician. Since 1996 he has taught Composition at the Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), an area magnet high school in New Haven. He has been commissioned to write several orchestral suites and jazz arangements for ECA and for the New Haven Symphony. He has been the recipient of music composition grants from many sources including ECA, Florida International University, Meet The Composer, The New Haven Symphony, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Please visit "A Composer's Journey", a blog on Fuller's recent composing trials and tribulations. It contains a personal history and philosophical viewpoint on what it takes to TRY to be a composer today.

During his undergraduate and graduate years at Yale University (1963-1969) he experimented with various instrumental combinations and chamber groups in his "serious" music, while at the same time collaborating on two undergraduate musical comedies, produced by the Ezra Stiles College Dramat - "Call Me Dexter" and "Hey, Ho, The Wind and the Rain".

In 1969, while still primarily a guitarist, he co-founded the The Quadrangle Jazz Ensemble with fellow students Frank Bennett (drums), Tom Fay (piano) and Roger Cooke (bass). This outstanding group of musician/composers played many concerts and school programs through the following years, allowing Fuller and his colleagues to develop a fusion of World Musics (principally Indian, African and Latin American) with Jazz. Much of their recorded music can still be obtained from Quadrangle Music, Fuller's publishing company. Other notable contributors to the Quadrangle Jazz Ensemble through the years have been Gerry Hemingway (drs.), Jane Ira Bloom & Bob Kolb (sax), Tom Ross & Tony Purrone (gtr.) and Paul Sullivan (piano.)

Fuller spent part of his career composing music for films, jingles and TV. The list of commissions, credits and composing grants can be seen at Commissions on this website. Suffice it to say, his music has reached a broad audience in many styles. His 1977 CT Commission on the Arts grant to compose "Contemporary Guitar: State of the Art" represented the culmination of his years of playing the guitar, while his 1995 commission to compose a number of original Latin/Jazz pieces for big band - performed by Paquito D'Rivera and the Sonny Costanzo Orchestra - represented a high stage in Fuller's artistic development.

As he continues to receive commissions to write for various groups (2004's arrangement of "Take The A Train" for Christian Sands and the New Haven Symphony is the latest) Fuller's compositional talents come more to the light and to an ever increasing audience.