Rate My Professor Christopher Anderson

Dr. Christopher Anderson serves as Senior Lecturer of Saxophone in the Music Department at Wartburg College, joining the faculty in the Fall of 2022. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014, where he was a graduate teaching assistant in saxophone under Debra Richtmeyer; a Master’s degree from Ithaca College, serving as graduate teaching assistant under Steven Mauk; and a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying saxophone with Eugene Rousseau and Otis Murphy. Anderson has undertaken additional studies in saxophone and modern music with Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Connie Frigo, Kenneth Fischer, Tom Liley, Christian Lauba, Richard Ducros, and Kenneth Tse. His pedagogical expertise has been sought throughout the Midwest, including as Adjunct Instructor of music at Richland Community College in Decatur, Illinois from 2008 to 2023, where he taught music theory and history courses; Instructor of Saxophone and Clarinet at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois from 2020 to 2023; Lecturer of Saxophone at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Fall 2016 as sabbatical replacement for Professor Debra Richtmeyer; and Visiting Instructor of Saxophone at the University of Iowa in Spring 2023 as sabbatical replacement for Dr. Kenneth Tse. Currently, he also holds positions as Instructor of Saxophone since 2022 and Instructor of Music Theory since 2023 at the University of Northern Iowa.

Since 2010, Anderson has maintained a private studio of nearly 40 saxophone and clarinet students in the Champaign-Urbana area, with his students securing top chairs in ILMEA District 3 concert and jazz bands, All-State bands, and scholarships to prestigious music programs. As a specialist in new music for saxophone, he has premiered compositions by Dr. Stephen Andrew Taylor, Shawn Allison, Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang, Robert Lemay, and Christian Lauba, with numerous works dedicated to him. Notable performances include his concerto debut with the Prairie Ensemble in Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da Camera and Darius Milhaud’s La Création du Monde with Sinfonia da Camera and the Mark Morris Dance Group at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. He regularly presents at North American Saxophone Alliance and World Saxophone Congress conferences and has performed programs throughout the United States and France. Anderson is a Vandoren Artist Clinician, performing exclusively on Vandoren mouthpieces, ligatures, and reeds.