Caleb Carpenter currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music at Allen University (Columbia, SC), and as the interim Instructor of Saxophone at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem, NC). His responsibilities at Allen include teaching applied woodwind lessons, leading the Jazz Ensemble, co-directing the Symphonic Winds, assistant directing the Marching Band, and teaching various academic courses for the Music Department. At UNCSA, he teaches applied saxophone, leads studio class, and coaches chamber ensembles.

Caleb has seen success in many performance competitions across the country. He was the national winner of the MTNA Young Artist Woodwind competition, named the winner of Northwestern University’s Concerto Competition, and selected as a finalist in both the North American Saxophone Alliance College Solo Competition and the Boulder International Chamber Music Competition. Caleb continues to push himself and his students to perform at their highest level.

Active nation-wide and in the southeast, Caleb has performed with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, the South Carolina Philharmonic, the Augusta Symphony, the Piedmont Wind Symphony, and Ensemble Eclectica. As the baritone saxophone chair of the MOD Quartet, Caleb has performed at the Charlotte BOOM and Shout! Festivals, the Asheville Fringe Festival, the UNCSA Improvised Music Festival, and “Side/Show,” presented by the Western Piedmont Symphony. Caleb has presented guest artist recitals and masterclasses at the University of South Carolina, UNC Greensboro, the University of Georgia, UNC Chapel Hill, and Furman University.

Caleb is an avid proponent of new music and supports composers of his generation through premieres of their works and thoughtful programming. He recently premiered a saxophone and piano work by Leigha Turner, titled Contours, during a faculty recital at UNCSA. With his collaborative partner, Dr. Alan Rudell, Caleb performed Contours at the International Saxophone Symposium and the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference. With the MOD quartet, he premiered a new chamber work by Nia Imani Franklin in Winston-Salem, NC, and looks forward to an upcoming recording project to share the work with the public. With the Doclé Reed Quintet, Caleb collaborated with the University of Florida composition department to present a concert of world premieres, bolstering the repertoire of the reed quintet.

Conference performances and presentations are a regular part of Caleb’s professional activity. Most recently, he shared three presentations at the 2025 NASA Region 7 Conference, including a concert of two new-to-the-saxophone transcriptions by William Grant Still and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, as well as new saxophone and piano trios by Catherine Likhuta and Matthew Orlovich. Caleb shared his dissertation work on Indian saxophonist, Kadri Gopalnath, at the 2024 NASA Conference and Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium. At the 2023 NASA Conference, he performed solo works by composers Tyson Gholston Davis and Nebal Maysaud.

During his doctorate at the University of South Carolina, Caleb held a graduate assistantship and taught undergraduate music theory and aural skills and studied saxophone with Clifford Leaman. Previously, Caleb earned his MM at Northwestern University and BM at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, studying with Taimur Sullivan and Robert Young.

Previous teaching positions include SC State University, Claflin University, and Columbia College. Caleb is originally from Harrisburg, NC.