Edward H. Tarr was regarded as a legend among trumpet players in his own lifetime. A native of Connecticut, Tarr studied with Adolph Herseth and Roger Voisin in an education gained from American orchestral musicians that Tarr has 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 the 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; far too many to be discussed here outside the context of the groups he initially established. In 1969 he founded the Edward Tarr Brass Ensemble, and he co-founded the orchestra of Scola Cantorum Basilensis in 1976 and was its first leader until he retired in 2001. By the time of his retirement, Tarr had already made more than 100 recordings. 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 1960s when the sound of a "Bach trumpet" was all the rage. Tarr's 1994 book The Trumpet is widely regarded as a definitive history of the instrument.