Department of Music

Zach Stern

Zach Stern enjoys a career as a saxophone soloist, chamber musician, and educator. Performances have taken him all over the world, including to such venues as Carnegie Hall, Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. As the founding alto saxophonist of the Sinta Quartet, Zach has received top prizes at many of the country's most respected competitions, including the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, Concert Artists Guild Competition, Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and Coleman Chamber Music Competition. He has performed as a featured soloist with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, the French Republican Guard Band, the Dallas Winds, the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Band, and the Southeast Missouri State University Wind Symphony.

As an educator, Zach is the Lecturer of Saxophone at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Instructor of Music at Southeast Missouri State University. During the summer, he teaches at the South Shore Conservatory's Summer Music Festival in Hingham, MA. Zach regularly presents saxophone master classes at universities, high schools, and middle schools around the country, and is in demand as a saxophone clinician and adjudicator.

Zach holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Saxophone Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music, and he previously earned his master's and bachelor's degrees in Saxophone Performance and Music Education at the University of Michigan, where he served as the teaching assistant for the saxophone studio. Zach’s primary saxophone teachers are Chien-Kwan Lin, Donald Sinta, and Scott Plugge.

Zach is a Conn-Selmer Artist and performs exclusively on Selmer-Paris saxophones.