Artist: Art Farmer

Art Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player.

He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player. 

As Farmer's reputation grew, he expanded from bebop into more experimental forms through working with composers such as George Russell and Teddy Charles. He went on to join Gerry Mulligan's quartet and, with Benny Golson, to co-find the Jazztet. Continuing to develop his own sound, Farmer switched from trumpet to the warmer flugelhorn in the early 1960s, and he helped to establish the flugelhorn as a soloist's instrument in jazz. 

He toured Europe with the Lionel Hampton orchestra from September to December 1953, and shared the organization's trumpet chairs with Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones and Benny Bailey. This aided his musical development considerably, as did his 1953 membership of Teddy Charles' New Directions band – the compositions he encountered in this band allowed him to consider a broader range of expression during improvisation. 

Farmer formed the Jazztet in 1959, with the composer and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, after each man independently concluded that the other should be a member of his new sextet. The Jazztet lasted until 1962, recorded several albums for Argo and Mercury Records, and assisted in the early careers of pianist McCoy Tyner and trombonist Grachan Moncur III. In the early 1960s Farmer established a trio with guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Steve Swallow.

Farmer toured Europe in 1965–66, then returned to the US and led a small group with Jimmy Heath. His stylistic development continued during this period of his career, in part because he "absorbed, understood, and had the technical and artistic gifts to put to personal use the John Coltrane innovations of the 'Giant Steps' period of the early 1960s". He settled in Europe in 1968 and continued to tour internationally until his death.

From the early 1990s, Farmer had a second house in New York and divided his time between Vienna and there. He had regular gigs with Clifford Jordan at the Sweet Basil Jazz Club and, later, with Ran Blake and Jerome Richardson at the Village Vanguard.  In 1999 Farmer was selected as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.