Portland State University Magazine Fall 1991

·~ For PSU's Fred Sautter teaching and playing the trumpet is more than music– it's a lesson for life. ''H ad I been born in another time, and another place," says Fred Sautter, "perhaps as an Indian in a Northern Plains tribe, I'd have gone on a vision quest to discover what I've been searching fo r all my life: that my miss ion is to give strength." Sautter is an assoc iate professor of music at Portland State University, as well as principal trumpet in the O regon Symphony. The concept that a trumpet instructor might- in add ition to music-teach "strength" is, perhaps, closer to Renaissance style than cur– rent education theory. But Sautter, in more than 25 years as a professional musician, has never been one to fo llow the path most traveled. As a you ng man from New Jersey, he honed his trumpet skills in Europe, playing jazz in Brussels, Strauss waltzes at a spa in Hanover, and opera orchestra with the Hamburg Philhar– monic. He has been in on the beginnings of a revolutionary change in the way trumpet-making is conce ived and executed, resulting in a major con– tribution to the quality of the horn 's sound . And he recently produced, in v ideo format, what many professional music instructors call one of the most conc ise explanat ions of trumpet playing ever seen . Sautter's interest in music was inev itable, he says. His father was a bus driver for the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, and for a time during the '30s, his mother was an operator fo r a call -in rad io jukebox show. He was born in New York C ity, and his mater- nal aunt and grandmother-both ar– tists-made sure that young Sautter was exposed to the city's cultural advantages, from Broadway musica ls to art exhibitions. As an adolescent, Sautter was prone to ear infections that kept him home from school. As he lay in bed, read ing books and listening to the radio, he found his attention drawn to the Big Band sound-espec ially the music of Harry James. "More and more, I began to like hearing the trumpet," he says. His interest con– tinued to peak, and he began play ing at 15 . His parents divorced about that tftme, and his mother relocated , with Sautter and his four younger siblings, to what he later ca lled "the semi– ghetto of New Jersey." Responsible for much of the care of his younger brothers and sisters while his mother worked, Sautter spent more and more time practicing trumpet. "At first," he says, "it was because l was stuck at home all the time, and I was bored." But music became a devotion. "Perhaps because, like most children , I craved some sort of discipline in my life. My mother-th rough no fa ult of her own-just wasn 't able to provide it." Music did. And it was a lesson Sautter never forgot. Later, when he began to teach trumpet, he was always aware that with each new student came a chance to impart fa r more than how to make beautiful sounds with a brass horn. "Music is a never-ending process," Sautter says. "It requires daily personal honesty, incred ible crafts ab ility, and a high degree of physical dexterity. "Living a successful life requires a lot of that, too." There was someone who once ta ught those lessons to Sautter. In the summer of 1955, just before his junior year in high schoo l, the family took a camping trip to Mex ico, passing through Texas on the way. PSU 13