Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Flumpet (1928-1999)

Born Arthur Stewart Farmer on 21 August 1928 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, an hour before his identical twin brother Addison Farmer, the bassist. Influenced by Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, and Freddie Webster, he moved to Los Angeles in 1945 with Addison, playing with Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, and Dexter Gordon, and recording "Farmer's Market" with Wardell Gray. In 1953 he settled in New York, playing in the Lionel Hampton band with Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones, and Gigi Gryce, and had his first session as leader on 2 July 1953. He worked with Gigi Gryce (1954-56), Horace Silver (1956-58), Gerry Mulligan (1958-59), Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus, and co-founded the Jazztet with Benny Golson in 1959. In the early 1960s he switched from trumpet to flugelhorn for a warmer, mellower sound, helping establish the flugelhorn as a soloist's instrument in jazz. He co-led a band with Jim Hall until 1964. In 1968 he moved to Vienna and joined the Austrian Radio Orchestra. In 1989 he helped create the flumpet, a trumpet-flugelhorn hybrid, with instrument maker David Monette. He received the Austrian Gold Medal of Merit in 1994, a Lifetime Achievement Concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1999. He recorded more than 50 albums under his own name, a dozen with the Jazztet, and dozens more with other leaders, known for his lyricism, warmth of tone, and sensitivity. He died 4 October 1999.