Fischer’s vocal talent in spotlight at Blue Note

Lisa Fischer, a singer whose career reads like something out of a fairy tale, returns to Blue Note Hawaii next week, bringing with her a voice for the ages and an attitude that is ageless.

For decades, Fischer was considered one of the best background vocalists in the business, singing behind the likes of Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, Teddy Pendergrass, Sting, Chaka Khan and Roberta Flack. If you’ve gone to a Rolling Stones concert in the last 29 years, chances are you’ve heard her. She’s accompanied them on all but two of their tours since 1989.

She’s had her signature moments, including duets with Mick Jagger on “Gimme Shelter” and an award-winning single, “How Can I Ease the Pain.” But she considers all that just a matter of what she loves most — making music with other artists.

“It’s all sort of part of the quilt,” Fischer said in a phone call from her home in Brooklyn, where she was born and grew up. “Background singing is the weaving of it, the lead singing is the weaving of it, the musicians are the weaving of it, the songwriting as well — everything that it takes for people to be able to share the music.”

Fischer won a 1992 Grammy and a Soul Train Award for Best R&B recording for “How Can I Ease the Pain,” but she ultimately decided she preferred a backup role — and stayed there until the 2013 award-winning documentary “20 Feet from Stardom” brought her back into the limelight.

The film focused on background singers for top rock and pop bands and won the Oscar for Best Documentary and the Grammy for Best Music Film, with each singer featured included in the award.

Since then, she’s been in heavy demand as a soloist, touring with her band, Grand Baton. The group set out with little promotion, but the film got them invitations to perform in clubs, at concert halls and at major jazz festivals, where they received critical praise and overwhelming audience appreciation.

“She brought down the house in the single best show I’ve seen in the many years I’ve visited Birdland,” wrote the New York Times’ Stephen Holden in a 2015 review.

Speaking with Fischer over the phone is a musical pleasure. During the interview, she was recovering from a slight cold, making her speaking voice light and airy. When she laughed — which she did often during a cheerful, philosophical conversation — it had a resonance so deep it was as if the phone had woofers.

Fischer grew up singing mostly in church and in school productions as a youngster, but auditioned for the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan, a magnet school for arts whose alumni include jazz drummer Kenny Washington and banjo player Bela Fleck. There, she got formal training in classical music, sight-reading and such skills as “learning what pianissimo is,” Fischer said, recalling it as a “romance” with art and her fellow artists.

“It was like, ‘Wow, you can do this?’” she said. “Just meeting other people who were passionate about what they were doing — it was really exciting.”

After a brief time in college, she set out on her career, going to auditions that were advertised in a trade publication for fledgling artists looking to work in New York’s competitive arts scene. She had no expectations, other than to be herself.

“It was the kind of thing where you come as you are, vocally speaking, and as far what you had to offer,” she said. “At least in my head, it wasn’t a competition, it was a chance to be heard and to see if things fit.

“I think you’ve just got to walk the path,” she said.

The auditions brought work, and brought her into the spotlight.

Her connection with the Rolling Stones came about when she was performing with Luther Vandross, when Jagger was doing a solo tour and looking for backup singers. Jagger’s press agent heard her sing and invited her to audition.

The rest is history, and her story as well.

“It was a beautiful time for me,” she said. “They were older, they had children, were married. It was a calmer version of what people expected to be. … They were just in a really beautiful and tender moment in their lives. They had just gotten back together as a group.

“The audience was totally important to them. It was important that the audience walked away feeling happy and satisfied and excited. They really enjoyed it.”

Now, as a solo artist, she has the opportunity to excite and satisfy.

With Grand Baton, she performs a blend of rock, soul and world music, with classical influences as well.

Songs from Led Zeppelin, Amy Grant and the Stones as well as her originals are mixed in too, and she finds challenge and fun in all of it.

“I get excited at trying new things,” she said.

“I think something about doing something new, it brings me back to when I was younger, and you just look at something and go, ‘Hmm. What do I with this? How do I approach this?’

“The whole process of going through those motions, it’s refreshing, like breathing new air.”