Tom Varner is a Seattle-based french hornist, by way of New York, currently teaching at Cornish College of the Arts. Tom has performed and recorded with Steve Lacy, Dave Liebman, George Gruntz, John Zorn, Bobby Watson, La Monte Young, Miles Davis with Quincy Jones, Bobby Previte, Jim McNeely, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, the Mingus Orchestra, Franz Koglmann, and appears on more than 70 albums. He also has 13 albums out as a composer/leader, with sidemen such as Steve Wilson, Tony Malaby, Ed Jackson, Ellery Eskelin, Tom Rainey, Cameron Brown, Drew Gress, Matt Wilson, Kenny Barron, Victor Lewis, Fred Hopkins, and Billy Hart. Varner has been in the Down Beat Critics Poll Top Ten annually since the mid-1990s. He has been awarded grants from the Jack Straw Foundation, Seattle's 4Culture, National Endowment for the Arts, the Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation, and has been a resident at the MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center, and Centrum arts colonies.