2011/12 Music Series

Tom Varner Nonet
Saturday, February 04, 2012, 8:00 pm


$20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students and alumni (with ID)

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Event Summary

Tom Varner, award-winning composer and French hornist, premieres “Nine Surprises” and other works from his recent CD release Heaven and Hell, as well as selected earlier works scored for this innovative nine-piece ensemble comprised of some of Seattle’s best improvisers including Thomas Marriott, David Marriott, Mark Taylor, Eric Barber, Jim DeJoie, Phil Sparks, Steve Treseler, and Byron Vannoy.

Internationally reknowned as one of the foremost proponents of jazz and improvised music for the French horn Tom Varner is also an inventive, witty, and passionate composer. Varner’s compositions have garnered awards such as the 2000 Jazz Composers Alliance Julius Hemphill Composition Award, and been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His 1997 album, Martian Heartache, (Soul Note) was voted as one of the top ten releases of the year in numerous jazz publications. Varner has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell, Blue Mountain, Centrum, and Civitella arts colonies, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jack Straw Foundation, and Chamber Music America. An annual DownBeat Critics Poll winner, Varner has performed as a leader at the Vienna Koncerthaus and the Seixal/Lisbon, Moers, Groningen, and Rotterdam Jazz Festivals, as well as countless appearances in the New York area with Steve Wilson, Ed Jackson, Lee Konitz, Tony Malaby, Ellery Eskelin, Cameron Brown, Drew Gress, Dave Douglas, Mark Feldman, Mark Dresser, Bobby Previte, Billy Hart, and Tom Rainey. As a sideman, Varner has toured North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Russia with George Gruntz, Steve Lacy, Reggie Workman, Bobby Previte, John Zorn, the Mingus Orchestra, the Vienna Art Orchestra, Bobby Watson, Jane Ira Bloom, La Monte Young, Jim McNeeley, George Schuller, Peter Scharli, Franz Koglmann, Rabih Abou-Khalil, McCoy Tyner, Quincy Jones and Miles Davis. Since relocating to Seattle 2005, Varner has enjoyed playing at the Vancouver, Earshot, and Bumbershoot festivals, the Seattle Art Museum, and at Tula’s and other clubs as both a leader and a sideman with artists such as Mark Taylor, Eric Barber, Hans Teuber, Wayne Horvitz, Jim Knapp, and Phil Sparks. Varner has taught and lectured at the Netherlands Horn Society, the Rotterdam Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, Towson State, SUNY Potsdam, New England Brass Conference, West Virginia University, Rutgers University, University of Georgia, Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin at Madison and Stevens Point, Lawrence University, University of Washington, Central Washington University, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Oregon. He is currently on the jazz faculty of Cornish College of the Arts.

Co-presented with the Earshot Jazz Society