1. Arthur Stewart Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player.
36 Facts About Art Farmer
1. 2.
Art Farmer subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.
3.
Art Farmer went on to join Gerry Mulligan's quartet and, with Benny Golson, to co-found the Jazztet.
4.
Art Farmer settled in Europe in 1968 and continued to tour internationally until his death.
5.
Art Farmer recorded more than 50 albums under his own name, a dozen with the Jazztet, and dozens more with other leaders.
6.
Art Farmer was born an hour before his twin brother, on August 21,1928, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, reportedly at 2201 Fourth Avenue.
7.
Art Farmer moved with his grandfather, grandmother, mother, brother and sister to Phoenix, Arizona, when he was still four.
8.
Art Farmer started to play the piano while in elementary school, then moved on to bass tuba and violin before settling on cornet and then trumpet at the age of 13.
9.
Art Farmer's family was musical: most of them played as a hobby, and one was a professional trombonist.
10.
Art Farmer's grandfather was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
11.
Art Farmer taught himself to read music and practiced his new main instrument, the trumpet.
12.
Art Farmer started playing trumpet professionally at the age of 16, performing in the bands of Horace Henderson, Jimmy Mundy, and Floyd Ray, among others.
13.
Art Farmer left high school early but persuaded the principal to give him a diploma, which he did not collect until a visit to the school in 1958.
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Art Farmer left school to tour with a group led by Johnny Otis, but this job lasted for only four months, as Art Farmer's lip gave out.
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Art Farmer then received technique training in New York, where he worked for a time as a janitor and played as a freelance musician during 1947 and 1948.
16.
An audition for Dizzy Gillespie's big band was unsuccessful, and Art Farmer returned to the West Coast in 1948 as a member of Jay McShann's band.
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The hazards of the touring jazz musician's lifestyle were present: while travelling overnight by car between Phoenix and El Paso, to get to another Roy Porter-led gig, the car that Art Farmer was in overturned at high speed, leaving him concussed and Porter with broken ribs.
18.
Art Farmer worked in Los Angeles for a time as a hotel janitor and a hospital file clerk, before joining Lionel Hampton's orchestra in 1952.
19.
Art Farmer toured Europe with the orchestra from September to December 1953, and shared the organization's trumpet chairs with Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones and Benny Bailey.
20.
Art Farmer relocated to New York and, on July 2,1953, had his first recording session as leader.
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Art Farmer became "one of the most sought-after trumpeters of the fifties": he continued to work with Gryce, and with Horace Silver and Gerry Mulligan, among others.
22.
Art Farmer recorded only twice with Horace Silver's group, as Silver recorded for Blue Note Records, while Art Farmer was signed to Prestige.
23.
In New York, Art Farmer worked with Lester Young, who told him to "tighten up and tell a 'story' in each solo".
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The wide range of styles these arrangers represented was extended when Farmer took part in a series of experimental sessions with composer Edgard Varese in 1957.
25.
Work opportunities were diminishing as rock became more popular in the mid-1960s, so Art Farmer joined the pit orchestra of Elliot Lawrence for the production of The Apple Tree on Broadway, for six months.
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Art Farmer had regular gigs with Clifford Jordan at the Sweet Basil Jazz Club and, later, with Ran Blake and Jerome Richardson at the Village Vanguard, both in New York.
27.
Art Farmer was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal of Merit in 1994.
28.
Art Farmer recorded extensively as a leader throughout his later career, including some pieces of classical music with US and European orchestras.
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In 1999 Farmer was selected as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
30.
Art Farmer first married in the mid-1950s, to a woman from South America.
31.
Art Farmer's second wife was a distant cousin; this marriage ended in divorce.
32.
Art Farmer married again, to a Viennese banker named Mechtilde Lawugger, and their son, Georg, was born in the early 1970s.
33.
Art Farmer described himself in 1985 as "an introvert, and kind of reclusive"; a soundproof room in his Austrian house allowed him to practice alone for the four or five hours a day that he desired.
34.
Descriptions of Art Farmer's playing style typically stress his lyricism and the warmth of his sound.
35.
Art Farmer moved from trumpet to playing mostly flugelhorn from the early 1960s, utilising the latter instrument's more mellow sound and Art Farmer's ability to get what he wanted from it without having to use a mute.
36.
One comment on a concert given when Art Farmer was 67 was that "his style was continuing to evolve"; he "delivered several solos in which his characteristically flowing lines were interrupted by sudden, wide melodic leaps and disjunct rhythmic accents".