Jacob Varmus Quartet at

acob Varmus left his hometown, San Francisco, in 1991 to go to the University of Iowa. Like many before him, he had high hopes of coming of age as a poet while cruising the vast American heartland. He saw language and experience as the tools to probe the deepest layers of the human psyche. In his first year he was admitted to the undergraduate writers' workshop where he studied with Jorie Graham. As he produced poems unremittingly and charted the labyrinthine maze of academic life as an English major, he also played trumpet devotedly, getting a good classical foundation with David Greenhoe. Although not set on a career in music he was nonetheless engrossed in the music of the great jazz trumpeters, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, to name a few...

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acob Varmus left his hometown, San Francisco, in 1991 to go to the University of Iowa. Like many before him, he had high hopes of coming of age as a poet while cruising the vast American heartland. He saw language and experience as the tools to probe the deepest layers of the human psyche. In his first year he was admitted to the undergraduate writers' workshop where he studied with Jorie Graham. As he produced poems unremittingly and charted the labyrinthine maze of academic life as an English major, he also played trumpet devotedly, getting a good classical foundation with David Greenhoe. Although not set on a career in music he was nonetheless engrossed in the music of the great jazz trumpeters, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, to name a few. Chet Baker and Woody Shaw were also early favorites and of special import to his trumpet sound then and now.

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