Bert Truax, who currently plays trumpet with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, was second trumpet of the Dallas Symphony from 1976-2001. He began playing the trumpet at the age of seven. As a published composer, his works are recorded on Crystal Records. He has performed with the Fort Worth Symphony, Lewisville Symphony, and the Memphis Symphony in addition to having an illustrious recording career. His recent donation of trumpet music and historical documents to UT Tyler comprises a useful and appreciated archive.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Universities rely heavily on community support for projects and programs. Some of that support is corporate or government, but a great deal comes from individuals in our community and the support isn’t just monetary. Case in point, a huge donation of music to UT Tyler’s Center for Performing Arts from a musician with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra.
Trumpet player Bert Truax is our guest today. Welcome.
Bert Truax: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Mike Landess: Good to have you here. You’ve been a musician and teacher for many decades. You have quite a collection of music that you’re donating. Tell us a little bit about it.
Bert Truax: It all started basically in 2019 where the F3 tornado pretty much destroyed our condominium.
Mike Landess: Where was this?
Bert Truax: This is at home in Dallas, Texas.
Mike Landess: Ah, OK.
Bert Truax: And we had 30 minutes to get out important papers before the roof fell in on top of us. I’ve got a couple students, and we went over with boxes. The filing cabinets for my music were OK because they’re protected. We just took the filing cabinets out and dumped all the music into boxes, and I had a lot of boxes.
Mike Landess: That happens to us as we start moving through our lives.
Bert Truax: Yes, it does. Yes, it does. I decided at that point, to try to figure out what I wanted to do with most of all of that music because frankly, I’m near the end of my career. And I figured this would be a big help for someone teaching in a university to have that library of trumpet music. I thought of Jeremy. We play together in the East Texas Symphony.
Mike Landess: Jeremy is UT Tyler’s Jeremy McBain.
Bert Truax: He’s the professor of trumpet here at UT Tyler, and I got to know him very well, and he was a fine player and a very fine teacher. And I thought, why not ask him if he would like to have the music donated to them? And so I put it all together in about six or seven big boxes, brought it down to Tyler and gave it to Jeremy to use for his studio.
Mike Landess: What kind of music is this? What is the range here? As I understand it, there are solos and ensemble music, all kinds of things.
Bert Truax: Exactly. There are chamber music pieces for multiple trumpets, solos, and also trumpet books, some of which were signed by some of my really wonderful teachers back in the day.
Mike Landess: And also as I understand it, too, there’s, you said chamber music method books and all kinds of different things.
Bert Truax: And it’s a pretty complete collection. So you can probably start from one end and go all the way through all of the boxes.
Mike Landess: How did you come to start this collection?
Bert Truax: I started playing trumpet when I was 7 years old. I started playing professionally at 15 years old. And I went to a music school in Philadelphia, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the year I graduated, I won a job as playing second trumpet in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which I did till 2001.
Bert Truax: I say semi-retired cuz I retired from the heavy concert schedule that the Dallas Symphony has to doing a little more teaching and a little more playing chamber music.
Mike Landess: You are working with East Texas Symphony Orchestra as well?
Bert Truax: Yes, for many years. For many years.
Mike Landess: Now, a contemporary outlook might be, “Gee, isn’t all of that stuff available just by Googling it?” I mean, can you go to Amazon and find this kind of thing? I gather not.
Bert Truax: Most of it, you cannot. It is not published anymore. And the idea of having the actual book makes a big difference in teaching, I believe. Instead of looking at a screen, you’re actually looking at the real McCoy. And as I said, some of it that I donated has markings in it from some very famous teachers who have now passed. So there are things to help students as well written in.
Mike Landess: So when we talk about how much you, how you came to collect so much material, you are the first musical pack rat I’ve met in my life.
Bert Truax: Yeah. I guess you could say that–50 years worth of music.
Mike Landess: And all donated to The University of Texas at Tyler. So why donate it now, and what are your hopes for its use here at UT Tyler?
Bert Truax: I know that Jeremy has a great program here, and I’ve figured that he might be able to use this collection of music in his teaching. He is actually doing a trumpet festival coming up in June, and the chamber music that I donated will be of great help to him in forming trumpet ensembles during that festival.
Mike Landess: We’re talking about the event that’s coming up June 19 through 23, the Brass Camp?
Bert Truax: Yes.
Mike Landess: And will you come and visit for some of that?
Bert Truax: I’d love to except I’ll be in Alaska.
Mike Landess: Oh, can’t you Zoom it or something?
Bert Truax: Yeah. I wouldn’t put it past you.
Mike Landess: I know a little bit about collecting. My guilty pleasure is collecting parts and then eventually assembling vintage guitars. And my fear is that one day when I’m gone, someone’s gonna look at that collection and say, “I wonder if Goodwill will take this stuff.”
It means a lot to me, but not necessarily for everyone. I’m sure you must have looked at your collection that way at some point in time.
Bert Truax: Oh yes, absolutely. And thinking of it winding up at a used bookstore would just– I just couldn’t do that.
Mike Landess: We’re glad that you couldn’t, and we’re glad that you thought of us. Now, when you interact with the next generation of musicians who may go on to play with symphony orchestras, are you feeling hopeful about these kids? Do you have confidence that they’re gonna take this hand off of the torch and move forward and do bigger and better things?
Bert Truax: I hope so, and so does Jeremy. The level that you need to achieve is very high these days because there are many graduate students who have performance degrees, and there are not that many orchestral jobs and so it’s very difficult to really get to that point. But these books should, can help, if there’s someone who wants to achieve that potential.
Mike Landess: Every musician that I’ve known over the years, and I’ve known a lot of them, will talk about the great highs and how terrific it is when things are going well. And when things are tough for a musician, as a for instance, the pandemic where everything is shut down for a long period of time. How do you, how do people keep the fire in their belly through times like that? And I say people, how do musicians keep their fire in their belly during those times?
Bert Truax: It’s difficult. It’s very difficult because we are performers in that heart and we’re hams, so we like to interact with people and a lot of people that I’ve heard of and seen on YouTube are creating their own music because there’s nothing else they can do. And some of these inventions are very well-crafted and I don’t want to say that’s the future of music, but it is a nice outlet that people used, especially during the pandemic, because they could not interact with real people.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been East Texas Symphony Orchestra trumpet player, teacher and UT Tyler Music Benefactor, Bert Truax. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
