Edward H. Tarr was regarded as a legend among trumpet players during his lifetime. A leading pedagogue and proponent of historical performance practices, Tarr was a master of the trumpet and its relatives, an author, and amassed a considerable recording catalog, often highlighting works by less-known composers. Tarr was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on June 15, 1936. He studied with Adolph Herseth and Roger Voisin in an education gained from American orchestral musicians that Tarr mostly employed in work overseas. In 1959, Tarr relocated to Switzerland and studied musicology with Leo Schrade, but a busy concert and recording schedule that blossomed not long after prevented him from collecting his degree in musicology until 1985. Tarr was the trumpet player in Hans Richter's Münchner Bach-Orchester, and his recording career commenced around 1960. Tarr worked and appeared as a soloist with many ensembles, both of a period persuasion and those of a more conventional instrumental makeup. In 1969, he founded the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble, and he co-founded the orchestra of Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 1976 and was its first leader until he retired in 2001. In 1980, Tarr formed a trumpet and organ duo with his future wife, Irmtraud Kruger, simply called The Duo. In 1985, Tarr also co-founded and served as the first director of the Bad Säckingen Trumpet Museum. Tarr was a specialist in early trumpet literature, and he played all of the members of the trumpet family and a wide range of archaic instruments related to the trumpet, hence the great demand for his services in the 1960s when the sound of a "Bach trumpet" was all the rage. By the time of his retirement, Tarr had already made more than 100 recordings for labels such as Christophorus, BIS, and EMI, among others. Tarr's 1977 book Die Trompete is widely regarded as a definitive history of the instrument. He died on March 24, 2020, following complications from heart surgery. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis