Based in New York City, saxophonist Zach Herchen performs contemporary, jazz, and rock music. Zach loves new music and is constantly working with composers. He has premiered 31 pieces since 2003 ranging from jazz tone poems to Japanese noise rock to multimedia works. Zach recently released his first CD, Emerging Voices, featuring commissioned works for voice and sax with opera singer Elisabeth Halliday. He is a founding member of the AM/PM Sax Quartet and performs with the rock band Man Down.
Zach has served on staff at NEC’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and performed at BU’s Spectral Summer Professional Performance Workshop, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States 2011 Conference, the 4th International Master-Class for Classical Saxophone, and the Look & Listen Festival. In 2008 he was an artist-in-resident at Wildacres Retreat. Zach has performed as a soloist in Italy, Sweden, and Germany, and at Duke University and New England Conservatory. He performed on Scott Alexander’s album “Scott Alexander Makes a Big Deal Out of It” and Man Down’s album “Somewhere Down In Florida”.
Zach holds a MM and BM in Saxophone Performance (and a BM in Recording Arts Engineering) from The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University where he was a recipient of the Richard Franko Goldman Prize for performance. Zach has studied with Gary Louie, Gary Thomas, Timothy McAllister, Arno Bornkamp, Vincent David, Jan Schulte-Bunert, and Ties Mellema.