Art Farmer, 71, Be-Bop Master of the Trumpet and Fluegelhorn
By BEN RATLIFF ,NYTimes
http://allmusic.com/cg/x.dll?UID=9:37:46|AM&p=amg&sql=B6486
Art Farmer, one of the more important second-generation
be-bop musicians, an improviser who could say a great deal in a few notes
on the trumpet and fluegelhorn and later on his own hybrid instrument,
the "flumpet," died on Monday in Manhattan.
He was 71 and lived in Manhattan and Vienna.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said his manager and companion,
Lynne Mueller.
Farmer was considered a master of ballad playing.
His tone was soft and even and sure, with no vibrato and with
canny silences built into his improvisations.
He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and when he was 4 his
family moved to Phoenix. He studied piano and violin in grade school
there. As a teen-ager he joined a dance band playing big-band
arrangements, and he often invited members of whatever swing band happened
to pass through town to come to his house and jam with him and his twin
brother, Addison, the bassist, who died in 1963.
In 1945, when they were 16, the Farmer brothers moved to Los
Angeles, having promised their mother that they would finish school.
It was a time when great musicians were coming out of the city's
integrated high schools; at Jefferson High Farmer studied with the well
known music teacher Samuel Browne, who also taught Frank Morgan,
Hampton Hawes and Don Cherry, among many others.
Farmer worked in Los Angeles with Horace Henderson, Johnny Otis
and others, leaving school to join Otis's group on tour.
He recorded a be-bop classic, "Farmer's Market," with Wardell
Gray's band.
In 1952 Farmer went on tour with Lionel Hampton, and in 1953 he
settled in New York, joining bands led by Gigi Gryce and Horace Silver. In
1958 he was hired by the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan for one of his bracing
new pianoless groups.
At the end of the 50's Farmer formed the Jazztet, a sextet, with
the saxophonist Benny Golson. Together they wrote a deep repertory of
harmonically sophisticated, tightly arranged music, and the group
defined the state of the art for mainstream jazz until the music's
prevailing winds began to grow wilder.
The group broke up in 1962, and Farmer started another jointly
ed group, with the guitarist Jim Hall. The Jazztet reunited in 1982 and
played through most of the 80's.
In the early 60's he often used the fluegelhorn, which has a
warmer, creamier sound, suiting his lyricism and terseness.
Then in the early 90's he designed a mixture of the two
instruments, the flumpet, which combined projection with warmth.
When work grew sparse in New York, he moved to Vienna in 1968
to join a radio jazz orchestra.
He ended up staying and starting a family but traveled
constantly, playing with local pickup rhythm sections around the world. For
the last few years, he had a residence in Manhattan and was dividing his
time equally between Vienna and New York.
Farmer's discography as a leader is large and as a sideman
larger, encompassing work on the Blue Note, Contemporary, Soul Note,
Enja and Arabesque labels, among others. His most recent album, from
1997, was "Silk Road" (Arabesque).
Besides Ms. Mueller, Farmer is survived by his sister, Mauvolene
Thomas, of Tucson, and his son, Georg, of Vienna.
