Douglas Yeo (born 1955) is an American bass trombonist who played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2012, where he held the John Moors Cabot Bass Trombone Chair. He was also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. In 2012 he retired from the BSO and accepted a position as professor of trombone at the Arizona State University School of Music, a position he held until 2016. From 2019 to 2023, he was trombone professor at Wheaton College (Illinois), and he was professor of trombone at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2022-2024.

Background

Born in Monterey, California in 1955, Yeo first learned to play the trombone as a child living in Valley Stream, New York and continued while living in the Oak Ridge section of Jefferson Township, New Jersey, graduating in 1973 from Jefferson Township High School. Yeo holds a bachelor of music degree with honors from Wheaton College in Illinois and a master of arts degree from New York University. His principal teachers were Edward Kleinhammer and Keith Brown. Before joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra/Boston Pops Orchestra in May 1985, Yeo was a member of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, (1981–1985), and was on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, in Baltimore, and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.. His background has included a four-year tenure with the Goldman Band, and performances with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Gerry Mulligan Big Band, and orchestras for numerous Broadway shows. From 1998 to 2008, he was Music Director of the New England Brass Band, which released five compact disc recordings under his direction. In 2006, the New England Brass Band, under Mr. Yeo's direction, won first place in the Honors Section at the North American Brass Band Association National Championship, held in Louisville, Kentucky. He announced his retirement from the BSO, effective on August 27, 2012, at the conclusion of the Tanglewood 75th anniversary season. He moved to Arizona, where he was appointed Professor of Trombone at Arizona State University (Tempe). In 2014, he was the recipient of the International Trombone Association's highest honor, the ITA Award, presented to him "in recognition of his distinguished career and in acknowledgement of his impact on the world of trombone performance." He was given the International Trombone Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024, "in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the trombone and a career that has reflected a commitment to excellence and achievement.

Performance and recording highlights

Historic brass speciality

In addition to playing the bass trombone, Yeo plays bass trumpet, contrabass trombone, and has become a leading exponent of historical brasses such as the buccin, serpent, ophicleide and bass sackbut.

Other activities

Yeo has been extensively involved in teaching. In addition to his major positions at New England Conservatory of Music, Arizona State University, Wheaton College, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he has eight times been on the faculty of the annual Hamamatsu International Wind Instrument Academy and Festival (Hamamatsu, Japan), and has been guest artist and teacher at the International Trombone and Tuba Festival (Beijing, China), the Dutch Bass Trombone Open (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and the Nagoya Trombone Festival (Nagoya, Japan). A prolific writer, Yeo has written more than forty articles on the trombone and orchestral playing for various publications, including International Musician, The Instrumentalist, The Brass Herald, Christianity Today, the Historic Brass Society Journal, the International Trombone Association Journal, and the T.U.B.A. Journal. He did extensive research in the Boston Symphony archives, resulting in the publication of four photo/historical articles on BSO brass players from 1881 to the present; he mounted an exhibit at Symphony Hall on the history and hobbies of members of the Boston Symphony from 1881 to the present during the 1993–94 season. In 2000, he wrote a trombone teaching curriculum for the University of Reading's (United Kingdom) Music Teaching in Private Practice Initiative of their Department of Arts and Humanities in Education. He is the co-author, along with Edward Kleinhammer, of Mastering the Trombone (Ensemble Publications. 1997), and is author of The One Hundred: Essential Works for the Symphonic Bass Trombonist (Encore Music Publishers, 2017/2024), and Serpents, Bass Horns and Ophicleides in the Bate Collection (Oxford University Press, 2019). In 2021, he published two books, Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry (University of Illinois Press), co-authored with Kevin Mungons, and An Illustrated Dictionary for the Modern Trombone, Tuba, and Euphonium Player (Rowman & Littlefield). Yeo was the plaintiff in a 1994 court case, Yeo vs. Lexington, that tested important issues in scholastic media law. In 1997 Yeo won on appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals but subsequently lost at the First Circuit Court of Appeals (en banc) and carried the case to the US Supreme Court which declined to hear it.