Douglas Yeo (1955 -) | University of Illinois Archives

Douglas Yeo (1955 - ) was born in Monterey, California. At the age of nine, he began performing on the trombone in New York and Oak Ridge, New Jersey. In 1973, he graduated from Jefferson Township High School. He earned a bachelors of music degree from Wheaton College (IL) and a master of arts degree from New York University. Between 1981 and 1985, Yeo performed bass trombone with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, serving as a faculty member at both the Peabody Conservatory of Music (MD) and the Catholic University of America (DC). He served as the bass trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1985 until 2012. During this time, he also served on faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music. Following this, he served as Professor of Trombone at Arizona State University until 2016. In 2019, he was appointed to the faculty at Wheaton College and in 2022 he served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Yeo is a leading scholar of historic low brass instruments and author or co-author of the following books: Mastering the Trombone (EMKO 2008); The One Hundred: Essential Works for the Symphonic Bass Trombonist (Encore 2017); Serpents, Bass Horns, and Ophicleides at the Bate Collection (Oxford 2019); An Illustrated Dictionary for the Modern Trombone, Tuba, and Euphonium Player (Illinois 2021); and Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry (Illinois 2021).

Yeo was the first bass trombonist to solo with the Baltimore and Boston Symphony Orchestras. During his career as a soloist, Yeo gave the premiere of Vaclav Nehlybel's Concerto for Bass Trombone; the bass trombone premiere of John Williams' Tuba Concerto; Lawrence Wolfe's Wildfire; and Norman Bolter's Temptation for serpent and string quartet; and Simon Proctor's Concerto for Serpent and Orchestra, under the direction of John Williams; and Christopher Brubeck's Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra, among many other appearances. In 2014, Yeo was awarded the International Trombone Association's ITA Award, the highest award offered by the association.