Arthur Stewart Farmer

October 4, 1999 Arthur Stewart Farmer, jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player, died.

Farmer was born August 21, 1928 in Council Bluff, Iowa but raised in Phoenix, Arizona. He began his musical education by studying the piano and violin. He moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of 16 and worked as a musician from the mid-1940s onwards. In 1952, he joined the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and toured Europe.

In 1958, Farmer released “Modern Art.” Other albums by Farmer as leader include “To Sweden with Love” (1964), “The Company I Keep” (1994), and “At Boomers” (2008). In 1968, Farmer moved to Vienna, Austria to perform with the Austrian Radio Orchestra and in 1994 he was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal of Merit. In 1999, he was designated an NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts and in 2001 he was posthumously inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.