Art Farmer: 1928-1999
- Art Farmer
- Trumpet, flugelhorn, flumpet
- Born: August 21, 1928 in Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Died: October 4, 1999 in New York City, New York
Copyright © 1999
The Scotsman, 1999
Farmer, Art
Art Farmer was one of the most respected survivors of the generation of musicians
weaned on bebop, and one of its most subtle and distinguished practitioners. He developed
a very individual stylistic approach to his music, initially on trumpet, later on
flugelhorn, and ultimately on a hybrid of both horns which he and its maker, David Monette,
christened the "flumpet".
The instrument shares characteristics of both trumpet and flugelhorn, but has a rich,
firmly focused sonority which is very much its own. It was a sound which proved ideally
suited to Farmer's economic but highly lyrical style. The trumpet is often a showy horn, but he was never a player who sprayed notes around in profligate displays of
technical proficiency. He adhered to a credo which valued the ability to say a lot
in a few notes, and to tell a coherent "story".
He was renowned for his mastery of the ballad, but was equally adept at a biting attack
on faster tempos, where his articulation and control were exemplary, but with no
sacrifice of emotional content. On stage, he was a dapper, physically undemonstrative
player who produced quietly remarkable things on his instrument. He recognised the
value of developing a personal voice in his music, and also of the need to extract
as much personal satisfaction as possible from playing a music which did not always
bring material rewards commensurate with the artistry which its practitioners brought to
it.
He said: "I always tried to widen the range of my playing. When I started out I wanted
to play like Fats Navarro, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie -- I put Dizzy third because
it was just too difficult even to hear what he was at sometimes, far less play it. But as time goes on and your own ideas get stronger, you don't do that -- it all
goes into the mixer and comes out, you hope, sounding like Art Farmer. In this music,
you really need to get satisfaction from what you play, because sometimes that's
all you're going to get."
He was born Arthur Stewart Farmer into a musical family in Iowa, but moved to Phoenix,
Arizona, with his family at the age of four, where he studied piano and violin at
school. He played the sousaphone and then cornet in the school band, and performed
in a dance band playing stock arrangements from the Basie, Ellington and Lunceford books
as a teenager.
He was an assiduous attender of both concerts and jam sessions whenever a swing band
passed through Phoenix, and later recalled that he and his twin brother, the bassist
Addison Farmer, who died in 1963, would invite musicians to come to their house and
jam with them, picking up a valuable grounding in the process.
Having first promised their mother that they would finish high school, the brothers
moved to Los Angeles as 16 year olds in 1945. They attended the celebrated Jefferson
High in the city, where they received further musical polishing from Samuel Browne,
the respected music teacher who taught many aspiring jazz musicians.
The brothers found work on the thriving jazz and black music scene on Central Avenue
in the immediate post-war years, and worked with bands led by Johnny Otis, Jay McShann,
Roy Porter, Benny Carter and Gerald Wilson, among others. The trumpeter worked with saxophonist Wardell Gray in 1951-2, during which time he made the first recording
of a tune which became a staple of the bop repertory, 'Farmer's Market'.
He toured Europe with Lionel Hampton in 1953, in a band which also included fellow
trumpeters Clifford Brown and Quincy Jones, and saxophonist Gigi Gryce. When he moved
to New York in 1954, he formed a productive two year alliance with Gryce. He joined
pianist Horace Silver's Quintet in 1956, also for two years, then worked in Gerry Mulligan's
pianoless quartet for a year from 1958.
As well as these more fixed collaborations, he played with several other giants of
the music in the mid-Fifties, including Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Thelonious
Monk, Charles Mingus and Art Blakey, and also worked in more experimental settings
with Teddy Charles (in his New Directions group which also included Charles Mingus and Teo
Macero) and George Russell.
In 1959, he co-founded one of the significant groups of the era with saxophonist Benny
Golson. The Jazztet was a sextet with a trombonist (initially Curtis Fuller and later
Grachan Moncur) and rhythm section, and featured arrangements which were more sophisticated than much of the free-wheeling hard bop of the era, while still leaving plenty
of space for improvisation.
They recorded six albums between their formation and their break-up in 1962, one of
which was dedicated entirely to the music of John Lewis, the pianist with the Modern
Jazz Quartet and a significant jazz composer. Farmer later revealed that he had sometimes chaffed against the level of arrangement which characterised the band's music,
but their legacy is an important one in bop history.
Farmer had gradually been moving to a greater emphasis on the gentler and more lyrical
qualities of the flugelhorn, and, along with Clark Terry, was one of the first musicians
to really establish that horn as a major instrument in jazz, rather than a provider of alternative colouration.
Following the break-up of The Jazztet, he formed his own group with guitarist Jim
Hall in 1962, a setting which provided a perfect context for flugelhorn. He worked
as both a leader and a sideman in New York until 1968, when an invitation to join
a radio jazz orchestra in Vienna brought him to Europe, where he was called upon to play on
a regular basis with the celebrated Paris-based Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band
as well.
He settled in Vienna and brought up a family, but was often on the road. The Jazztet
reformed in 1982, and convened on an occasional basis through much of the decade,
but most of his work in the last three decades of his life was as a soloist in a
variety of contexts, most characteristically playing with local rhythm sections in Europe,
America and Japan. In the early 90s, he established a second home in New York again,
and divided his time between the two cities.
He left a generous discography, both as a leader and as a guest soloist or sideman.
It encompasses both small group and big band music, and his later work shows no falling
away in invention or capacity. He recorded for many important labels over his career, including Prestige, Contemporary, United Artists, Argo, Mercury, Atlantic, Columbia,
CTI, Soul Note, Concord, Enja, Sweet Basil, and most recently, Arabesque.
He ventured into classical music on occasion as well, including recording Bach's Brandenburg Concertos
with the New York Jazz Orchestra, and performing Haydn's Trumpet Concerto No 1
with the Austrian-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic Orchestra in 1994. In that same year,
he was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal of Merit in Vienna, and a concert honoring
his lifetime musical achievements was held at the Lincoln Center in New York, which
featured the participation of several of his distinguished contemporaries, including Gerry
Mulligan, Benny Golson, Slide Hampton, and Jim Hall, as well as younger luminaries
like Wynton Marsalis.
Art Farmer died following a heart attack. He is survived by his partner, Lynne Mueller; his sister, Mauvolene Thomas; and a son, Georg.
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