Brian Utley

Brian Utley is Principal Senior Lecturer in Saxophone and Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. He is a regular recitalist at regional and national conferences of the North American Saxophone Alliance, and has performed at multiple World Saxophone Congresses, U.S. Navy Band International Saxophone Symposia, and new music festivals. As an advocate of new music, he has commissioned and premiered works by noted composers including David Froom, Leonard Mark Lewis, Stephen Lias, Lidiuno Pitombeira, and William Price. Utley is also a regular guest artist and clinician at universities and secondary schools throughout the country, serves frequently as an adjudicator for local, state, and regional competitions, and served as a faculty member of the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts for five years.

Utley has been a featured soloist with the Vanderbilt Wind Symphony and the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with the Nashville Symphony, contemporary music ensembles Intersection and Chatterbird, and the Blair Wind Quintet. Utley’s solo recording Characters is available on the Mark Records label. The project features 21st-century works by American composers, including three world premiere recordings. He can also be heard on the Parma and Naxos labels.

He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in saxophone performance, with a minor in music theory, from Louisiana State University. He also holds the M.M. from L.S.U. and the B.M. from Murray State University, and his primary saxophone teachers include Griffin Campbell and Scott Erickson. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt in 2011, Utley served as Associate Professor of Saxophone at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Utley is an endorsing artist for Légère Signature Series Reeds.