After attending Kimbolton School, he studied at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music, London, where his teachers included Bernard Keeffe (conducting), Richard Arnell (composition), Ian Lake, Jakob Kaletsky and Alan Rowlands (piano), and Douglas Moore and John Burden (French horn).
2), Peter Crossley-Holland (Symphony in D), String Orchestra music by Arnold Bax, Stephen Dodgson and Richard Arnell, Orchestral Songs by John Ireland, Arnold Bax and others, also Piano Concertos (with pianist Victor Sangiorgio) by Stanley Bate, Benjamin Godard and Franz Reizenstein and with pianist Peter Donohoe piano concertos by Malcolm Arnold, Alan Bush and Cyril Scott and with pianist Martin Roscoe the complete piano and orchestra works by Charles-Marie Widor.
During the 1990s he made many recordings of complete musicals for TER, including Brigadoon, The Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sweet Charity, Stop the World I Want to Get Off, The Fantasticks and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
[2] In 2010, he completed and orchestrated Ernest John Moeran's Symphony No.2 (from sketches), which he recorded with the RSNO on Dutton Epoch in 2011.
The first public performance of the Symphony was given by Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra at the English Music Festival in June 2012.
His orchestration of Sarnia – an Island Sequence for Orchestra by John Ireland has recently been recorded by the RSNO and released on Dutton Epoch.