Old-World Blues is a rhapsodic, jazz-filled trombone solo enriched with electronics and a video, focused on the exploration of nostalgia and the enamoring of one's past. The piece is set as a sentimental broadcast, and is made up of four main colorful sections that explore different aspects of jazz, swing, and blues music. Old-World Blues stands as both a memoir to the past, the rose-tinted jewel that many have obsessed over, and a warning to the dangers of living in the past: catching a case of those old-world blues.

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“Our pasts made us who we are; without them, we say we are nothing. So we let them consume us.”

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Old-World Blues was Alexander Skelton's project within the 2025 DBR Lab, which consists of a multitude of performance and networking opportunities, collaborative efforts, and creating undeniably genuine and creative work. The Lab presented their final works on April 26, 2025, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY.

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A special thanks to the following artists for recording the music found in the backing track!

- Stella Babbitt (Voice)

- Marcus Conn Minister (Voice)

- John Panfili (Piano)

- GianCarlo "Devanii" Lay (Saxophone)

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**All of the footage used in the video is Public Domain, found from the Internet Archive.