Jacob Varmus

Being pushed in a pram along the banks of La Scala in 1976 the two-year old Jacob Varmus suddenly emitted squeals and shrieks of unmasked delight. The most rapturous sounds he'd ever heard were bouncing off the plaza stone: a lone trumpeter's warming up from within open stage doors at the local opera house. Ten years later Jacob Varmus had a trumpet of his own and began winning top marks at all the California Music Educators' Association festivals for his work as soloist (Haydn's trumpet concerto and Goedicke's Concert Etude) and chamber musician.

Evolving parallel to his love of music was an interest and talent in using language artistically thru poetry, critical essays, and autobiographical stories. In high school he won awards for poetry and sports journalism (an avid San Francisco Giants fan) as well as music. His first year of college, Jacob was admitted to the undergraduate Iowa Writers Workshop for poetry where he studied closely with MacArthur grant recipient Jorie Graham. At Iowa he also had the good fortune of studying with classical trumpet virtuoso David Greenhoe.

An initiation to the music and mastery of John Coltrane, as well as inspiring lessons with progressive trumpeter (and Iowa alum) Paul Smoker led Varmus to focus primarily on learning jazz music to the fullest. In 1994 he decided to move to New York to finish his BFA at the New School Jazz program where he received timeless lessons from a long list of artists including Arnie Lawrence and Billy Harper. Here he became known to his peers and elders as a composer of harmonically intricate yet compellingly simple and striking tunes.

In his senior year he was selected by the Jazz Composers' Collective to write a suite combining jazz quintet with string quartet which featured Ted Nash and Frank Kimbrough. Continuing with his interest in developing as a composer (and helping others do the same) he founded Workshop 39, a jazz composers' workshop in Long Island City, and found work as an incidental music composer for theater companies like Yankee Rep. In 2005 he won a commission from the Queens Council on the Arts to present 'Queensboro Plaza' a suite for jazz quintet drawing on the types of rhythmic cross currents associated with Steve Reich, a harmonic language close to Stravinsky's and Scriabin's, and the collective improvisation of early jazz.

Awards

First Place International Trumpet Guild Student Jazz Competition, 1994; KJA Jazz Advocate Top Ten Albums of the Year (All the Things We Still Can Be, 2006) Queens Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Grant for Queens Library Jazz Series, 2008 Banff Centre For the Arts scholarship, 2005 Queens Council on the Arts commission, 2005