Concert In Memoriam Edward Tarr

We are all united in our grief at the significant loss we have suffered from Ed Tarr’s death. Irmy says that she allowed him to leave while she was present. He had already given so much.

The extraordinary accomplishments of his life are almost unparalleled. His scientific work is unprecedented in the entire trumpet world: the concertos he discovered and made accessible to us after painstaking work in archives, museums, and private collections are as innumerable as the students he accompanied, educated, and shaped throughout his life.

We are all aware of how small we are next to him, except Friedemann Immer (although he appreciates Ed’s greatness, as we all do).

He heralded the renaissance of the baroque trumpet, the key trumpet, and other later developments. Almost every trumpet player in the world who has a baroque instrument in his hands can identify with him by some kind of connection.

It is simply impossible to go over all of his accomplishments in this letter: his collection of instruments, his years of work at the Bad Säckingen Trumpet Museum, and much more (just to mention a few of the projects, Ed, passionately pursued).

All in all, I would like to express how grateful I am to him for having succeeded like no one before in giving the trumpet a worthy place in the international family of all instruments—a place that the trumpet had lost since its decline after the Baroque (see the half-page tribute to his life in the New York Times).

And now a few snippets of thoughts come to mind: his unforgettable and unsurpassed Hummel Concerto, his Bach edition, his passion for fine wines and fine cigars. And then of the last phase of his life: the warm humanity with which he treated many, especially his wonderful wife, Irmy. She let him go all the way to where he is now: sitting in the great celestial orchestra alongside Gottfried Reiche, Bud Herseth, Louis Armstrong, Maurice André, and all those who preceded him.

To celebrate and honor him, we will all gather for an “In Memoriam” Concert on June 15, 2021 (Ed’s 85th birthday), at 5:00 pm at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Rheinfelden (Germany).

We will all meet there. I will confirm soon how, where, what, and when.

—Reinhold Friedrich