Born into a musical farm family in Northern Maine, Philip Yaeger learned to sing as soon as he could talk. At the age of ten he began playing the trombone, and soon discovered his first great love (in the inanimate sense): jazz. He attended William Paterson University, studying under master musicians like Rufus Reid, Sy Johnson, Steve Turre, Conrad Herwig, and Ed Neumeister, and received a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance in 1999. Thereafter, he lived for some years as a freelance musician (and messenger, and executive assistant, and caterer) in New York City and Philadelphia.
In 2004 he relocated to Austria, where he annexed a master’s degree at the Arts University in Graz, studying (again) with Ed Neumeister and, briefly, the composer Georg Friedrich Haas. He subsequently moved to Vienna, where he lives and works to this day.
Philip Yaeger is active as a trombonist, composer/arranger, and occasional vocalist. His decades of experience encompass jazz of all descriptions, pop, soul, hip-hop, electronica, and contemporary classical music. The list of artists with whom he has performed includes folks like Ari Hoenig, Max Nagl, David Murray, Uri Caine, Ursula Rucker, Die Strottern, Soap&Skin, and the Vienna and Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestras. He serves as trombonist, house composer/arranger, and occasional bandleader for the Jazzorchester Vorarlberg. He has performed at CBGB’s, the Blue Note (NYC), Radio City Music Hall, Konzerthaus Wien, Theater an der Wien, Bregenz Festspielhaus, and other venues and festivals too numerous to count in North America, Europe, and the Near and Far East.
In recent years he’s branched out: his sideline in language services – which began when an Austrian colleague asked him to translate a band bio – has turned into quite the cottage industry; he also occasionally serves as biographer or essayist. At the beginning of the pandemic, he joined the IG Freie Musikschaffende, an advocacy group for freelance musicians, and was catapulted onto its executive board before he knew what hit him. He parted ways with the organization some time later, but his connection to the Austrian cultural policy milieu has notably failed to disappear completely; he now works with the musicians’ information and advocacy center mica – music austria.
As of late 2024, he is working on commissions, playing some trombone, and – finally! – getting ready to record the second album by his band Hunter (the first is available via Bandcamp). He lives with his wife, writer and cabaret artist Ulrike Haidacher, in Vienna’s 9th District.