TRue Echoes

Tony Rue was born and raised in Los Angeles in a Christian family and have been a saxophone player playing alto sax for the past 65+ years. He started as a sax player at the age of 7 years and was formally trained for first 7-8 years. His mom was what one might call a "tiger mom". For five days a week for each week of those years, she had his two brothers and he practicing in separate rooms for half an hour twice a day. No excuse short of serious illness could get them out of these appointments. She was also their agent - she was constantly looking for gigs for them where live music was needed. Upon graduation from a Christian college, he had already played in several concert and marching bands as a saxophone player, usually in 1st chair, and on stage as a solo musician and talent shows in some premier settings receiving 1st place trophy several times. His brothers and he played as a group throughout their youth and received the esteemed Director's Trophy from the director of the Inglewood Boys Band, Col. Veasy Walker, who later directed the Disneyland band and whose son directed the USC Trojan band.

After college he played as a solo musician off and on at various private events until Kenny G started becoming popular (early 1990s) at which point he purchased a soprano sax and started to seriously play and perform on both his soprano and alto saxophones as a solo musician. Since then he has performed in several bands including big bands, swing bands, concert bands and jazz bands and in the praise band at the church where he was attending. He has also performed solo gigs at numerous events with attendance at some being over 400 people.  On his birthday in 2011, his church gave him a new Yamaha Tenor saxophone. He has become very fond of this new instrument and is now including it in his gigs. In 2012 in conjunction with Terry Benson (his church pastor and worship leader), he published a CD of mostly Christmas music with a few non-Christmas selections. Then again in 2013 he published a 2nd CD of mostly Christian hymns.

Since the advent of Kenny G, his passion has been for performing live sax music at public and private gatherings. It is the gift from God that he is most passionate about. He loves to play all kinds of music, old standards, smooth jazz, blues, rock and pop - his repertoire includes some of each (see the Music Repertoire page). He started the TRue Echoes web site in 2010. His greatest musical influences are Richard Elliot, Sam Levine, Everette Harp, Kenny G, Boney James, Walter Beasley, Kirk Whalum and Gerald Albright.