by Douglas Yeo I’ve been playing the trombone since 1964, when I was in fourth grade. For many years thereafter, trombone was the only wind instrument I played. OK, I played the flutophone for awhile in elementary school (and then during my freshman year in college when my roommate and I would jam regularly, he on piano and me on flutophone—trust me, you can improvise on it). But maybe that doesn’t count. When I got to Wheaton College, I began to branch out more seriously to other instruments. I minored in euphonium briefly when I was a student at Wheaton College from 1974–1976 before switchin ..read more

by Douglas Yeo Regular readers of The Last Trombone may notice something is missing. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for this blog, After 40 years of college teaching, the times they are a-changin’, in which I announced I was stepping away from institutional teaching. Ever since I served as director of bands at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Edison, New Jersey (1979–1981), I’ve been a teacher in a host of educational institutions. From St. Thomas Aquinas I taught at Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (1982–1985, during the time I was bass trombonist of the Baltimore Symphony ..read more

By Douglas Yeo Readers of The Last Trombone know that I am a football fan. My wife and I are season ticket holders to Chicago Bears football. When we lived in Arizona from 2012-2018 after my retirement from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, we had season tickets to Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State University football. And during my long career in Boston, we attended many New England Patriots games. Football is a big part of our lives. The Super Bowl is the culmination of the National Football League season and this Sunday, February 12, 2023, millions of people around the world will tune in to ..read more

by Douglas Yeo I first heard of ChatGPT in an article in The Atlantic by Daniel Herman, “The End of High-School English” (December 9, 2022). He wrote: Teenagers have always found ways around doing the hard work of actual learning. CliffsNotes date back to the 1950s, “No Fear Shakespeare” puts the playwright into modern English, YouTube offers literary analysis and historical explication from numerous amateurs and professionals, and so on. For as long as those shortcuts have existed, however, one big part of education has remained inescapable: writing. Barring outright plagiarism, students hav ..read more

by Douglas Yeo Readers of The Last Trombone know that in the summer of 2022, I accepted a one-year position as Clinical Associate Professor of Trombone at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The University’s previous trombone professor abruptly retired in late May 2022 and the School of Music did a search to hire a trombone professor for the 2022–2023 academic year while the University decided how to move ahead with the trombone professor position. I was very happy to accept that position to help out the University during this time of transition. I’ve just finished my first semester worki ..read more

by Douglas Yeo Readers of The Last Trombone know that last year, University of Illinois Press published a book co-authored by my friend, Kevin Mungons, and me. The subject of the book is Homer Rodeheaver, the trombone-playing song leader for the evangelist William “Billy” Sunday for twenty years during the first third of the twentieth century. Rodeheaver played the trombone for over 100 million—yes, million—people during his lifetime (1880-1955) and he profoundly shaped the course of gospel music. Rodeheaver created the first gospel music record company (Rainbow Records), and he founded what w ..read more

by Douglas Yeo I have played the National Anthem at sporting events more times than I can count. When I was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, our brass section performed The Star Spangled Banner at countless New England Patriots games, Boston Red Sox games, and Boston Celtics games. As a member of the Boston Pops Orchestra, I played the National Anthem at Super Bowl XXXVI with singer Mariah Carey (where the New England Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams—the first of the Patriots’ six Super Bowl championships), and when I was Professor of Trombone at Arizona State Universit ..read more

by Douglas Yeo Artist Jean-Jacques Sempé died on August 11 at the age of 89. Like so many people in the United States, I got to know his whimsical cartoons while reading The New Yorker (Sempé was French and his artwork appeared internationally). When I was a young boy, my father subscribed to The New Yorker and I used to run home from school on the day the new issue would arrive in our mailbox so I could look enjoy the cover and the many sophisticated cartoons inside. I got to love Sempé’s sense of humor and his artistic style. He drew many covers for The New Yorker but he also drew carto ..read more

by Douglas Yeo My favorite colors are blue and orange. Why? Well, they’re the colors of my undergraduate alma mater, Wheaton College (Illinois). I graduated from Wheaton College in 1976, and I’ve been the College’s trombone professor since 2019. Compact disc recording of the Wheaton College Trombone Quartet, 1974–1976 (released 2022), Like a River Glorious. James Roskam, Eric Carlson, William Meena, and Douglas Yeo, trombones. Blue and orange are also the colors of the Chicago Bears. My wife and I are season ticket holders to Bears football. There’s a lot of blue and orange in our family’s wa ..read more

By Douglas Yeo Today is Independence Day in the United States of America. It’s a holiday; banks, the post office, and the stock market are closed. Friends of ours are coming over to our house later today and we’ll have dinner together. Grills across the country are firing up and families are having cookouts and picnics. There will be patriotic concerts, and fireworks will light up the night sky. Of course, July 4 is more than all of that. This holiday isn’t just a day off. It’s a day to remember July 4, 1776, when a group of of representatives from the Thirteen Colonies gathered to sign a Decl ..read more