All-Music
Guide
Born: Aug 21, 1928 in Council Bluffs,
IA
Largely overlooked during his formative
years, Art Farmer's
consistently inventive playing has
been more greatly appreciated
as he continues to develop. Along
with Clark Terry, Farmer
helped to popularize the flugelhorn
among brass players. His
lyricism gives his bop-oriented
style its own personality. Farmer
studied piano, violin and tuba before
settling on trumpet. He
worked in Los Angeles from 1945
on, performing regularly
Central Avenue and spending time
in the bands of Johnny Otis,
Jay McShann, Roy Porter, Benny Carter
and Gerald Wilson
among others; some of the groups
also included his twin brother
bassist Addison Farmer (1928-63).
After playing with Wardell
Gray (1951-52) and touring Europe
with Lionel Hampton's big
band (1953) Farmer moved to New
York and worked with
Gigi Gryce (1954-56), Horace Silver's
Quintet (1956-58) and
the Gerry Mulligan Quartet (1958-9).
Farmer, who made many recordings in the latter
half of the 1950s (including with Quincy Jones and George Russell and on
some jam-session dates for Prestige) co-led the Jazztet with Benny Golson
(1959-62) and then had a group with Jim Hall (1962-64). He moved to Vienna
in 1968 where he joined the Austrian Radio Orchestra, worked with the Kenny
Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band and toured with his own units. Since the
1980s Farmer has visited the U.S. more often and has remained greatly in
demand up to the present day. Art Farmer has recorded many sessions as
a leader through the years including for Prestige, Contemporary, United
Artists, Argo, Mercury, Atlantic, Columbia, CTI, Soul Note, Optimism, Concord,
Enja and Sweet Basil. -- Scott
Yanow, All-Music Guide
Biography
"What I try to do with a song, is to get as much enjoyment out of playing
as I can. It's hard to verbalise, but the degree of enjoyment that I get
out
of it depends on just how natural it seems to me, and the natural feeling
of playing this horn comes from really losing yourself in it, getting to
the
place where the song is second nature and you don't have to think about
it." - Art Farmer
Over 40 years into his professional career, Art Farmer has made good on
all counts. He has made over a hundred recordings and the pleasure in
his playing is palpable on all of them. His facility and emotional depth
is
unmatched on the trumpet, the flugelhorn and now a combination of
both: the "flumpet". A curiously named, but beautiful sounding
instrument with the dark, lustrious sound quality of the flugehorn
incorporated with the bright edge of the trumpet, specially developed for
Art by US master brass craftsman, David Monette.
Art was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1928, into a musical family that
included his twin brother, the respected bassist Addison Farmer, who
died in 1963. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where he studied piano
and violin in grammar school. Soldiered into playing the bugle for
flag-raising ceremonies, young Art was assigned the sousaphone in the
school marching band and was soon handed the cornet. At the age of 15
he joined a dance band that played stock arrangements from the Count
Basie, Duke Ellington and Jimme Lunceford bands. Art was completely
won over to jazz by the sound of a trumpet in a big band and the
excitement of jam sessions, both of which he heard when the big bands
came through town.
During the summer before their last year in high school, Art and Addison
ventured west to Los Angeles and were soon immersed in the thriving
jazz scene around Central Avenue. They met such greats as Hampton
Hawes, Sonny Criss, Eric Dolphy and Charlie Parker and soon Art was
playing in the bands of Horace Henderson, Flyod Ray and Jimmy
Mundy.
With bandleader Johnny Otis, Art made his first trip to New York and
stayed long enough to win a job in Jay McShann's band. Landing back in
Los Angeles, Farmer took various day jobs when necessary in order to
play with musicians that he could learn from... Benny Carter, Gerald
Wilson and Dexter Gordon. He recorded his first sides, including his
heralded original "Farmer's Market" with tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray.
By 1953, Art was settled in New York and playing in the Lionel Hampton
band, alongside Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones and Gigi Gryce, amongst
others. He learnt unerasable lessons during that period, especially when
he played with tenor giant, Lester Young. Other musicians Art played
with during the mid-fifties included Coleman Hawkins, Thelonius Monk,
Charlie Mingus and Art Blakey.
After organising a quintet with Gigi Gryce, playing in the Horace Silver
Quintet and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, as well as mastering
"avant-garde" experiments with Teddy Charles, Teo Macero, and George
Russell, Farmer earned a reputation for being able to play anything.
Greater fame came in the brief flourishing of the Jazztet, the legendary
sextet that he and saxophonist Benny Golson founded in 1959. In the
sixties, Art formed a quartet with guitarist Jim Hall, but by the middle
of
the decade, he notes, "the bottom was falling out of jazz in New York".
He had toured Europe several times and in 1968, after being invited to
join a radio orchestra in Vienna, Art emigrated to Austria. He still lives
there today, but continues to maintain a full schedule with concerts, club
dates, clinics and festivals throughout Europe, the United States and
Japan.
In June 1994, Art was awarded "das Goldene Verdienstzeichen des
Landes Wien"..."The Austrian Gold Medal of Merit."
A concert honoring his lifetime musical achievements was held at the
Lincoln Center in August 1994. Among the musicians who participated
were his contemporaries Gerry Mulligan, Benny Golson, Slide Hampton,
Ron Carter, Jim Hall and Jerome Richardson. Wynton Marsalis, Geoff
Keezer and Lewis Nash also performed.
Art still plays and records with large orchestras. He recorded the
Brandenburg Concertos with the New York Jazz Orchestra and in
september 1994 he performed Haydn's First Trumpet Concerto with the
Austrian-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic Orchestra.
Whatever the context, Art Farmer treats each composition with the
same meticulous melody and harmony, with a unique sense of swing
and grace. |
