Dr. Allison Dromgold Adams is the Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she teaches and performs regularly. She is also a certified yoga instructor. Her interest in musicians' health began in 2007 when she suffered from focal dystonia as a second year Master's student at the University of Minnesota. Her full story can be found in Stories of Recovery.

Dr. Adams holds a B.M. in Music Education and Performance from Ithaca College, a M.M. in Music Performance from the University of Minnesota, and a D.M.A. from Arizona State University. She has taught saxophone at both Ithaca College and Cornell University, and served on the faculty of Ithaca College’s Summer Music Academy, teaching Yoga for Musicians as well as studio saxophone. Her non-collegiate teaching experience includes directing elementary and middle school band, and teaching private woodwind and piano lessons.

Dr. Adams has performed with the Knoxville Symphony and been featured in recitals at the University of Tennessee, the North American Saxophone Alliance conference, the College Music Society conference, Ithaca College, Western Carolina University, Cornell University, the Northeast Regional Tuba/Euphonium conference, and the Syracuse, New York recital series, “Civic Morning Musicals.” An avid proponent of new music for the saxophone, Dr. Adams actively commissions composers to write for the instrument. Works she has commissioned include Flames will Grow by Dominick DiOrio and Rumination and Manifestation by Keane Southard. Outside of her role as a performer, Dr. Adams’ research has focused on the integration of body awareness techniques in music pedagogy.

Her main saxophone teachers have included Steven Mauk, Eugene Rousseau, and Timothy McAllister.