The Hartt School, University of Hartford
The Yale School of Music
Carrie Koffman is in her 15th year of teaching on the faculty of The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. She is also on the faculty at the Yale School of Music. Prior to this, she held positions as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Penn State University, Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of New Mexico, and taught at Boston University.
Performances have included the World Saxophone Congresses in St Andrews, Scotland, Bangkok, Thailand, and Minneapolis, Minnesota; multiple SaxArt International Saxophone Festivals in Italy; a tour throughout New Zealand; the Xi'an International Clarinet and Saxophone Festival in China; the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Michigan; the Virginia Arts Festival; the International Viola Congress; several North American Saxophone Alliance National Conventions; and the International Double Reed Convention in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Koffman has been a featured soloist with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Centre Chamber Orchestra, the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, the Hartt Symphony Orchestra, the Hartt Wind Ensemble, the PSU Symphony Orchestra, the PSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble, the UNM Wind Symphony, and the Greater Hartford Youth Wind Ensemble while touring Europe. Among her ensemble performing credits are appearances with Sequitur, Le Train Bleu and Chelsea Symphony in New York City, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Waterbury Symphony and Wallingford Symphony.
She performs in a contemporary chamber music duo, The Irrelevants, with violist Tim Deighton. Their “excellent playing” of several new works in a New York recital was noted in The Strad. She also recently completed tours of Italy, Cyprus and the Midwestern United States as tenor saxophonist in the Transcontinental Saxophone Quartet. Additionally, she appears frequently as a soloist, chamber musician, and clinician.
Committed to new music, commissions and premieres include 50 compositions including works by Tanya Anisimova, Lera Auerbach, Susan Botti, Chen Yi, Michael Colgrass, Halim El-Dabh, John Duffy, Erberk Eryilmaz, Mark Kuss, Stephen Michael Gryc, Juliana Hall, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, David Macbride, Michael Mauldin, Tamar Muskal, Hilary Tann, Joseph Turrin, Gunther Schuller, Christopher Schultis, James Sellars, Ken Steen, Augusta Read Thomas, William Wood and Zhou Long.
Recording projects comprise twelve commercially available CD’s including Carillon Sky, Dialogues and Dragon Rhyme. 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.” She also has an ongoing recording and performing series entitled "Pink Ink" that is dedicated to promoting the music of living women composers.
Koffman's saxophone students have placed in approximately 100 different performance competitions including winning 19 university concerto competitions at four different universities. She is a founding faculty member of the American Saxophone Academy, an annual educational program designed for advanced college students and beyond. She also formerly taught saxophone for the All-State Program at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and was the Director of Bands at Belleville South Middle School in Belleville, Michigan. Koffman is a graduate with high honors from the University of Michigan where she studied with Donald Sinta, and the University of North Texas where she studied with James Riggs and Eric Nestler.
Koffman is a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher and teaches Yoga for Performers at The Hartt School. She is also a Conn-Selmer artist/clinician, and performs exclusively on Selmer Paris saxophones.