BIOGRAPHY
milasyoes@gmail.com
For more than three decades, Milas Yoes has dedicated himself to enriching the educational and performance opportunities for youth, the elderly and underprivileged music students in Texas, North Carolina and Arizona. He has taught in prisons, churches, public schools, private schools, colleges and union halls. He mentored eight successful student teachers from Arizona State University as a middle school band director in Tempe, Arizona and is currently serving as a new teacher mentor for the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association. Mr. Yoes has been recommended three times by his students for a Grammy Music Educator Award nomination. He was a quarterfinalist in 2016. He is retired and will continue his best efforts to enhance the musical enrichment of students and their directors everywhere.
For nineteen years Milas was the Director of Instrumental Music, Jazz Studies and Humanities at Phoenix College. He administrated a community band, a symphony orchestra, directed numerous jazz bands while serving over three hundred students per week. He was the Music Department Administrative Coordinator for seven years where he supervised a faculty of thirty instructors and five hundred students. Mr. Yoes also coordinated the P.C. Jazz Festival and founded the critically acclaimed Superstition Jazz Orchestra that performs at major venues in the Phoenix area. Prior to his tenure at Phoenix College, he was director of bands at Fees Middle School in Tempe as well as Powell Jr. High in Mesa, Arizona. Milas also was an adjunct professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Arizona Western College and Central Arizona College where he taught Music Appreciation in the Maximum Security Unit of The Arizona Department of Corrections in Florence, Arizona.
As a marching band judge for the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association, Mr. Yoes’ voice is recognized in band halls all across the state of Arizona. He has critiqued bands throughout the state of Arizona for well over a decade and has been a featured judge for The Northern Arizona University Band Day as well as the Mountain West Marching Invitational at Idaho State University. He was especially honored to join a nationally recognized panel of judges for the 2014 Division III and the 2015 Division II State Marching Festivals of Arizona. He is in constant demand as a guest clinician each and every marching season.
As a concert band clinician, Milas has conducted numerous high school and middle school honor bands in Tempe, Glendale, Tolleson, Phoenix and Yuma as well as the Arizona Elementary All State Band and the Region VI High School Honor Band. He has conducted the Greater Phoenix High School Honor Band twice. For well over a decade Mr. Yoes has been a featured clinician for the Arizona Band and Orchestra Directors Association Area Concert Band Festivals at numerous high schools throughout the state. His clinics are always comprehensive, informative and inspirational with emphasis on goal setting for the students and their future.
In addition to his concert and marching clinician experience, Mr. Yoes has been a featured clinician/adjudicator/performer at Jazz On The Mountainside (Arizona), the Highland Jazz Festival (Arizona), Collin College Jazz Festival (Texas), Lawrence University Fred Sturm Jazz Celebration (Wisconsin), the Oklahoma State High School Jazz Band Championships, International Association For Jazz Education, The Jazz Education Network, The Northwest Jazz Festival (Wyoming), The Kinser Jazz Festival of Casper College, Wyoming, Arkansas Music Educators Association Convention, Arizona Music Educators Association Convention and the Texas Music Educators Association Convention, as well as the Arizona State Jazz Band Festival. He has also been the guest conductor/clinician for the Arizona All-State Jazz Band II four times, the Four States Band Masters Association Jazz Band (Texas) as well as the Arkansas Region IX Jazz Band I. For the past eight summers, Milas has been a faculty member of the Texas All Star Jazz Camp in Plano, Texas.
As a jazz educator Mr. Yoes is responsible for starting seventeen new jazz bands in the Phoenix area at all levels from elementary to professional. His jazz bands have performed for various local and state festivals as well as national conventions including the International Association for Jazz Education, American Federation of Musicians, and Super Bowl XXX. For nine years, Mr. Yoes distinguished himself as the creator and artistic director of an all-city jazz program for students aged 14-19 known as the Young Sounds of Arizona (sponsored by the Phoenix Federation of Musicians, Local 586). The program grew into a nationally recognized organization comprised of two big bands and two combos representing twenty-three different schools. A large portion of his students received scholarships to The University of North Texas, Indiana University, The University of Miami, Brown, Harvard, the University of Southern California, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, The University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University as well as numerous local community colleges. Many of his former students are professional performers and educators throughout the country. One of which was awarded a Grammy for Best Spoken Word as a recording engineer.
Milas is originally from Huntsville, Texas. He has a Bachelors of Music Education degree from Sam Houston State University where he performed under the tutelage of Dr. Fisher Tull and Dr. Ralph L. Mills. He has a Masters of Music degree in trombone performance from the University of Arizona where he performed under the tutelage of Tom Ervin, Dr. Leonard Perlman and Dr. James Keene. He studied orchestral performance with Dr. Per Brevig and jazz with Gary Gray and Ted Piltzecker at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival. He also was a member of the Jazz Residency at Stanford University for ten consecutive summers where he studied with Wycliffe Gordon, Delfayo Marsalis, Steve Davis, Kendrick Scott, George Cables and many others.