Equally at home in the music of Monteverdi and Berio and hailed for his “brilliant playing…conveyed with admirable subtlety” (The News-Gazette) and “control over soft dynamics and sustained vitality” (Smile Politely), Arkansas based musician Andrew Gaffey is rapidly establishing himself as a saxophonist, educator, and conductor at the international level.

Performance engagements have taken him throughout the United States and abroad, with recent appearances at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Germany, Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, Indiana State University, the University of Central Arkansas, the Florida State University Festival of New Music, the Napoleon Electronic Music Festival, the International Saxophone Symposium, and national and regional North American Saxophone Alliance Conferences.

Devoted to collaboration with composers and sharing new music, Andrew has premiered works by numerous composers and served as the saxophonist with the Illinois Modern Ensemble, appearing as a headline soloist with that group on the 29th Annual Martirano Concert in October 2025. He has worked directly with composers including Georges Aperghis, Marcos Balter, Emma Cardon, Christopher Cerrone, Donnacha Dennehy, and José Luis Hurtado on their music for saxophone. He was a founding member of the Vanderbilt Contemporary Music Ensemble and also performed with Polymorphia, the resident new music ensemble at Florida State University.

In recent seasons, he has appeared as concerto soloist with ensembles including the Illinois Wind Symphony, the University of Illinois Film Score Orchestra, and the Illinois Wesleyan University Wind Ensemble. He has performed as an orchestral saxophonist with the Danville Symphony Orchestra, the Champaign-UrbanaSymphony Orchestra, Sinfonia da Camera, and the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra.

Gaffey does not limit himself to the concert saxophone, and is active in other areas of music. As a jazz saxophonist, he performed for four years with the Blair Big Band at Vanderbilt University, receiving two Downbeat Awards with that ensemble and touring the nation of Colombia in 2019. In 2026, he established and conducted the North American Saxophone Alliance Intercollegiate Saxophone Ensemble, an ensemble bringing together collegiate saxophone students from throughout North America and beyond.

A dedicated teacher, Gaffey maintains a private studio and has served on faculty as Instructor of Saxophone at Illinois Wesleyan University, as well as summer faculties at the University of Central Arkansas, Illinois State University, and the University of Illinois. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance and Literature with a cognate in Musicology from the University of Illinois, where he was the Saxophone Teaching Assistant and was a University Fellow. He was recently named the 2026 Krannert Center Debut Artist. He holds additional degrees from Florida State University and the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. His teachers include Nicki Roman, Debra Richtmeyer, Geoffrey Deibel, Brian Utley, and Jeff Coffin.