Carrie Koffman

Education

MM, University of North Texas

BM, University of Michigan

Carrie Koffman is Professor of Saxophone at The Hartt School of Music, Dance and Theater at the University of Hartford. She also held positions as Lecturer of Saxophone at the Yale School of Music, Lecturer of Saxophone at Boston University, Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Penn State University, and Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of New Mexico.

She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, in 17 countries, and on six continents. Commissions and premieres include over 75 compositions. One review in Fanfare Magazine calls her playing “suave, subtly nuanced, and technically secure in its every gesture,” while another refers to her “melting tone and touching sensitivity.” Music Web International describes her as “brilliant and dauntless.”

In addition to traditional performance spaces, Koffman is interested in bringing live music to unexpected places. She hiked 566 km of the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, sharing impromptu performances in 33 different cathedrals and churches along the historic medieval route. In this way, she was able to reach people from all over the world in contemplative spaces while they made their own pilgrimages. She is also interested in creating site specific performance experiences, such as a recent commission by composer Juliana Hall, written to be performed with a walking audience along the Wallace Stevens Walk in Hartford, created to memorialize the poet. And she has created a years-long philosophical performance art project entitled carries weight, which combines highpointing with a saxophone, performing a series of original, miniature works commissioned especially for the project on mountain summits, and interviewing others to collect stories creating contemplative experiences around the ideas of influence, power, and respect.

Koffman's saxophone students have placed in over 130 different performance competitions including winning 26 university concerto competitions at all five of the universities where she has taught. The careers of her alumni are varied, ranging from university professors, premiere military band musicians, performers (including one who has been on five Grammy nominated albums), acoustical engineers, elementary, middle and high school music educators, a Big Ten marching band director, freelance musicians, musical theater pit orchestra performers both on and off Broadway, recording engineers, professional orchestra administrators, private studio teachers, composers, community ensemble conductors, music librarians, a full time Disneyland musician, and a full time member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Current creative interests include her Voiced project, a series of compositions embracing stories not normally told in classical music. Current pedagogical interests include the creation and integration of curricular communication practices into the classroom, and evolving the pedagogy of musical interpretation.

She is a founding member of the Committee for Gender Equity of the North American Saxophone Alliance and served as the project manager for CGE’s Community Engagement Initiative. She is also a founding faculty member of the American Saxophone Academy, an annual educational program designed for advanced college students and beyond. Koffman holds a bachelors degree from the University of Michigan and a masters degree from the University of North Texas. Her primary mentor is Donald Sinta.

Koffman is a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher and teaches Yoga for Performers. She is a Conn-Selmer artist/clinician and Vandoren performing artist.