About

This site has evolved over many, many months (50+ of them, but who's counting) as a collaboration between Charlie Vernon and Danny Beckley. This site is maintained by Danny to promote Charlie's teaching, increasing solo career, and of course his record-shattering orchestral career.

Beginning at the young age of 20something, Charlie was a budding tenor trombonist playing Circuses in Atlanta when an opening in the Baltimore Symphony came up for the Bass Trombone chair. So Charlie, being the rather ambitious person that he has always been, decides to learn the bass trombone in preparation for the audition. No worries, it was a whole 3 months away (for the uninitiated to the world of orchestral auditions, that's just plain lunacy).

So, to the chagrin of many a bass trombonist at the time, he went on to win the job. He had a blast (literally... have you heard the recordings?) and then goes on in '80 to win the same position with the San Francisco Symphony. He played a season there before being selected by Riccardo Muti to join the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Then, in 1986, upon the retirement of his mentor, Edward Klienhammer, he went on to win the greatest trombone job in the land... the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Today, 23 years later, when Charlie is not sitting in the best chair in the world, he travels the world as a virtuosic soloist playing the Bass, Tenor, Alto, and Contrabass trombones, and is active as a teacher at Depaul University.