Bohumil Tůma

Biography

“To this day, I get the most experience from playing in the Czech Philharmonic, and that is the best school I could wish for.”

Bohumil Tůma already attained the position of bass trombonist of the Czech Philharmonic while studying at conservatoire. Playing that particular instrument had been his dream since childhood. In his family, there was plenty of music: his sister played the piano, and his father played the guitar and percussion and also sang. Bohumil began playing the recorder at elementary school, and later he took private lessons at the Česká Lípa Elementary School of the Arts. His instructor Aleš Jungmann also taught the trumpet. “I really wanted to play that instrument, but he said my front teeth were too big, so he gave me the choice of flute, trombone, or saxophone”, Tůma recalls. The saxophone had already been “taken” by his sister, so he decided for the trombone because it was closer to the trumpet. “It was probably at my second lesson with Mr Mašek, my teacher at the time, that I saw an older friend playing the bass trombone, and that was the moment when I knew what I wanted to play!” In the end, he did not get to play the bass trombone until his fourth year at the conservatoire, but he soon got the chance to play that instrument in the Czech Philharmonic.

He remembers the moment when it first occurred to him that he could work with that orchestra. Once on his way to a trombone lesson, he saw a poster for the festival Lípa Musica advertising a concert with Jiří Bělohlávek. “Later, I told my teacher I wanted to go to the conservatoire, and when he asked me what I wanted to do after graduating, I remembered the poster and answered ‘I want to play in the Czech Philharmonic!’ My teacher laughed gently and answered: ‘Lots of people want to do that!’”

After graduating from Josef Šimek’s studio at the Prague Conservatoire, he enrolled at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he is now studying under Lukáš Moťka. He has been a successful participant at numerous competitions such as the Brno International Music Competition (2017, third place) and a competition for students at Czech conservatoires and musical secondary schools in Teplice (2018, second place). From 2017 to 2019 he played in the orchestral academy of the Prague Philharmonia.

Besides classical music, he is also involved with music for winds, especially from the Balkans, something that he picked up thanks to Jakub, Mašek’s teacher at an elementary school of the arts. He also feels very close to jazz, which he says has “an inexplicable appeal in the paradoxical presence of chaos and order”. He writes and arranges compositions mainly for small brass ensembles. He enjoys fantasy videogames, cinema (especially horror films), floorball, hiking, travel, and cooking.