Caleb Carpenter currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music at Allen University, in Columbia, SC. His responsibilities 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. He takes great pride in his position and cherishes the opportunity to work closely with his students at Allen.

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.

An active performer nation-wide and in the southeast, Caleb has played alongside the South Carolina Philharmonic, the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, the Augusta Symphony, and Ensemble Eclectica. As the baritone saxophone chair of the MOD Quartet, Caleb has performed at the Charlotte BOOM and Shout! Festivals.

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 quartet 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.

In addition to his work at Allen, he holds adjunct teaching positions at SC State University, Claflin University, and Columbia College. Caleb is originally from Harrisburg, NC.