Kimberly Loeffert

Kimberly Goddard Loeffert is a music theorist and saxophonist who serves as Assistant Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts, having previously served on the faculty at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Loeffert is Immediate Past President of the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) and a founding member of the NASA Committee for Gender Equity (formerly the Committee on the Status of Women).

Loeffert’s recent research has focused on evaluating representation of composers and musicians in music theory pedagogy and scholarship. Along with John Peterson (James Madison University), she is co-editor of "Modeling Musical Analysis" (Oxford University Press 2025), a collection of essays that seeks to amplify the work of music theory scholars from underrepresented backgrounds by bringing together essays written by minoritized scholars modeling analytical writing using a variety of music theories and genres. She has presented at regional, national, and international music conferences for music theory, music in higher education, band, wind instruments, and saxophone.

Loeffert is the baritone saxophonist for the h2 quartet with whom she has won numerous chamber music prizes, including First Place Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and First Place at the inaugural North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition. She can be heard with h2 on seven critically acclaimed discs: "Infinity Mirror" (2020), "Soul Searching" (2019), "Enrapture" (2017), "Hard Line" (2015), "Groove Machine" (2012), "Times & Spaces" (2010), and "Generations" (2008). Loeffert has performed at prestigious venues around the world, including the Guarnerius Center for the Performing Arts (Serbia), Merkin Hall (New York City), the National Concert Hall (Dublin, Ireland), and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), as well as university recital halls across the country. She appears in a nationally syndicated PBS television episode of "Backstage Pass," and she is a Vandoren and Yamaha Performing Artist. Loeffert is also a co-founder and co-host of the Great Plains Saxophone Workshop.

In addition to her work at Virginia Tech and OSU, Loeffert has taught music theory, saxophone, and chamber music at Michigan State University, and music theory and aural skills at Florida State University where she earned a Ph.D. in Music Theory with a dissertation titled “Association and Interpretation in Recent Chamber Music: Gesture and Dialogue in Three Compositions by Franco Donatoni,” which addressed musical gesture in the performance and analysis of the chamber music of Franco Donatoni with particular attention to the unique dialogic facet of multiple interpreters contributing to the formulation of a single, unified, musical product. Loeffert holds a D.M.A. and M.M. in Saxophone Performance, as well as an M.M. in Music Theory Pedagogy from Michigan State University, and she completed a B.M. in Saxophone Performance and Jazz Studies at Northwestern University. Her primary saxophone teachers have included Joe Lulloff, Frederick Hemke, and Joseph Wytko.