Artist description A living American composer who is working in the Boston area.

Music Style Modern Classical

Musical Influences Bartok, Bach, Martinu, Prokofieff, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, McKinley, Brahms

Similar Artists Bartok, Bach, Martinu, Prokofieff, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, McKinley, Brahms

Artist History Peter R. Farmer (b. 1941) comes from a musically varied background. His father was a performer with the Wiffenpoof Singers; his mother was a pianist with whom he credits with introducing him to music through vehicles ranging from "Tubby the Tuba" to Brahms' first symphony. In his early teens he discovered jazz--first Dixeland, then Duke Ellington, and finally bebop--which inspired him to take up playing the trumpet. At age eighteen he attended the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox, MA. A career as a jazz trumpeter, capped by performing in an ensemble directed by Kenny Dorham, followed. In 1985 he switched from trumpet to saxophone and is currently performing in the Boston area. It was "the improvisational aspect of jazz that led me into composition...where I could fix my ideas in a form that would be repeatable in a consistant way." Farmer received his B.M. from the Boston Conservatory in 1969, having studies under Avram David. Two years prior to that he attended the Ferienkurze fur Neue Musik in Darmstadt where he participated in the composition "Ensemble"--a cooporatively composed orchestral work directed by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Farmer attended the Univerisy of Michigan where he received his M.M. in composition in 1976. His teachers were William Albright, William Bolcom, George Wilson, and Leslie Bassett. He received his D.M.A. in composition from U of M in 1982 and since then has taught music theory at Berklee College of Music and theory at Lowell State University. He has just finished and has a recording and premiere of his third symphony with the Moravian Philharmonic in Olomouc, Czech Republic and is now finishing a third string quartet.

Group Members One: Pete Farmer

Instruments Saxophone, Organ, Piano, Composer

Albums MMC 2028

Location Hyde Park, MA - USA

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