Don LeRoy Smithers (born February 17, 1933) is an American music historian and performer on natural trumpet and cornetto.
Besides his main topics of trumpet and Bach research, Smithers has been influential for the rediscovery of many important musical works, amongst them the seventeenth-century trumpet music preserved at the residence of the Bishops of Olomouc in Kroměříž, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), which include compositions by Biber, Schmelzer and Vejvanovsky.
In 1968, during the height of the cold war, he even managed to establish a copy of the whole collection on microfilm, which was deposited in the University Library at Syracuse, New York.
Following early recordings with ensembles like the New York Pro Musica, Musica Reservata, and the Studio der fruehen Musik, Smithers began to record a number of works for trumpet and cornetto with ensembles in Britain, Italy, West Germany and the former German Democratic Republic.
He was the first to authentically perform and record trumpet parts, like those of cantatas Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben, BWV 77, and Es reißet euch ein schrecklich Ende, BWV 90, on an uncompromised[clarification needed] copy of a Baroque-era natural trumpet and an original 18th-century mouthpiece.