Colin Fisher

*2025 stock* Garden of Unknowing is a work of staggering ingenuity from one of Toronto’s most talented and in demand multi-instrumentalists. Utterly on his own, Colin Fisher masterfully employs guitar, saxophone, synthesizer, drums and bass to create a shifting suite of nocturnal jazz. These are ghosts of song, which, going by the simple clear titles, emphatically question the very nature of existence. Fisher’s breath-taking technical ability to conjure whole sound worlds entirely on his own is obvious. But, far from an extended display of virtuosity, there is always a deep emotional core to his improvisations. It is a music characterised by a keening and searching inquisition of melody, reaching and grasping at song form, yet allowing the compositions to fall through his fingers. This is none more apparent on album centre piece ‘Eternity’, Fisher latticing dark chordal shapes over skittering , muscular drums which ushers his soul alighting tenor saxophone into the higher reaches of redemptive ecstasy before disintegrating into silence. This is music bursting under the weight of its own beauty.