Nancy Fisch was born in Brooklyn, New York June 25, 1943. She and her older brother were raised by their single mother, Mary Fisch. Nancy studied piano as a child, but later switched to French horn. When she and her mother moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, she was accepted as a student of the world-renowned performer and pedagogue, Wendell Hoss.
Hoss had been principal French horn player for major orchestras in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, as well as for Hollywood studio orchestras; he taught at conservatories and universities and organized horn groups, such as the Horn Club of Los Angeles and the International Horn Society.
In Los Angeles, Nancy’s day job was in the records department of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. In the evenings, Nancy played French horn and served as volunteer librarian at the Pasadena, the Santa Monica and the Beach Cities Symphonies. She was not adept at sight-reading, and because she had such a knack for organization, her teacher, Wendell Hoss, suggested she pursue professional work as a music librarian.
In 1977, Wendell Hoss moved to San Diego. When Nancy visited him, she realized he was in need of help. She decided to move in with him to serve as his caregiver and companion. In an obituary for Hoss, Norman Schweikert, principal French horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, wrote, “All of Wendell’s friends owe Nancy a debt of gratitude for her unselfishness and humanitarianism in taking care of Wendell during his last difficult years.” Hoss died in 1980 at the age of 88.
In San Diego, Nancy’s clerical abilities were sharpened by her job at North Island Naval Air Station, entering F-14 fighter jet parts data into a computer. By 1983, Nancy followed Hoss’s recommendation and got hired as the assistant librarian of the San Diego Symphony under head librarian, Joe Wagner. Although Nancy’s feisty, outspoken personality was in stark contrast to the mild-mannered, gentlemanly Wagner, the two got along well, according to Helen Wagner, his widow. Joe groomed Nancy to take over his position when he retired in 1989. She served as head librarian for the next twenty-two years. During that time, she invited her mother, Mary, to come and be with her. The two lived together until Mary’s death.
As head librarian, Nancy’s responsibilities included discussing the season’s selections with the music director, determining which scores were in the library and which needed to be rented or purchased, and estimating those costs. She was in charge of some 1,500 different scores, and tasked with preparing the music needed for each concert, which included editing and notating tempos, dynamics, articulations, inserts, cuts, bowings and breath marks. Music often had to be corrected and new scores proofread for mistakes or inconsistencies. She and her assistants were also responsible for putting the music folders out and collecting them before and after rehearsals and concerts.
Nancy took her role very seriously, “This is not a 40-hour-per-week job,” she said. “A music librarian’s job never ends. Like a doctor, you’re always on call. It’s the most fascinating job in the whole organization; nothing happens on that stage until it happens in this library. When a concert begins, everything you’ve done is working, all your hours of preparation and hard work are worth it when the audience claps and the conductor smiles.”
Nancy was one of the first female head librarians of a major symphony orchestra. Her successor, who first served as her assistant, current San Diego Symphony Orchestra’s head librarian, Courtney Secoy Cohen, called her a “very strong woman, passionate about her work.”
Nancy was a proud member of MOLA (Major Orchestras Librarian Association). During her time as head librarian, she was well-aware of the orchestra’s often precarious financial situation and always “fostered a ‘can do’ attitude when resources were few and funding was scarce,” wrote John MacFerran Wilds, trumpet player of the SDSO, who also worked with Nancy as part time music copyist and arranger.
He recalled one instance when, because the soprano lead in the 1995 SD Opera production of Lucia di Lamermoor unexpectedly required that the mad scene aria be a whole tone lower, Nancy, John, and an additional copyist stayed up the entire night transposing all the parts to the new key. After that encounter, Wilds called the threesome “music librarian combat veterans.”
Nancy was known for what music columnist, Valerie Scher, in a 2010 interview called “a salty sense of humor.” Scher described her as the wise-cracking Joan Rivers of symphony librarians. One of Nancy’s close friends, who assisted in the library, SDSO’s longest serving violinist, Pat Francis, remembered their laughs together and how one of the guest conductors, former maestro of the SDSO and well-known choral director, Robert Shaw, would come to the library during breaks to enjoy Nancy’s wit. A feature of the library that illustrated Nancy’s comedic flair was the prevalence of cow images, from the bobblehead bovine on her desk to the cow-themed wallpaper on her computer.
When Nancy retired, in May, 2011, she left the organization at the same time as her friend, LeAnna Zevely, office manager and assistant to the CEO. LeAnna remained loyal and devoted to Nancy. During the final weeks of Nancy’s life, LeAnna reached out and was able to locate where Nancy was hospitalized, assist her with paying bills and bring her requested items from home. Last June, Nancy suffered a stroke and heart attack. Subsequently, she was afflicted with spinal meningitis, and she succumbed on January 16 to Covid-19.
Jahja Ling, the last conductor under whom Nancy worked, wrote, “Nancy Fisch was a dedicated librarian of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra for many decades. She was very passionate in doing her job by preparing the music with all the necessary parts and markings so that the musicians could perform their best. As librarian, she was an unsung hero who was never given the public acknowledgment like many of us who perform on stage. For this, we are eternally grateful.”
Yoav Talmi, former SDSO conductor from 1989 to 1996 emailed from his home in Tel Aviv, “I am very saddened to learn of Nancy Fisch’s death. During my 7-year tenure as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony, Nancy was always by my side as the loyal librarian of the SDSO. I remember all those cases when we needed urgent help from the library and Nancy, with her rather blunt sense of humor—provided the work tirelessly and devotedly. May she rest in peace.”