David Binney is an American alto saxophonist and composer living in New York City.
Binney was born in Miami, Florida and was raised in Carpenteria, California. From his parents, who loved music, he heard albums by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Jimi Hendrix. He took saxophone lessons in Los Angeles. When he was nineteen, he moved to New York City and studied with saxophonists George Coleman, Dave Liebman, and Phil Woods. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts helped him record his first album, Point Game (Owl, 1991). In the 1990s, he started his own label, Mythology Records.
He has been of several bands, including Lost Tribe, Jagged Sky, Lan Xang, the Gil Evans Orchestra, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, and Medeski Martin & Wood. He has also worked with Adam Rogers, Alex Sipiagin, Ben Monder, Ben Perowsky, Bill Frisell, Bobby Previte, Brian Blade, Cecil McBee, Craig Taborn, David Gilmore, Edward Simon, Eivind Opsvik, Jacob Sacks, James Genus, Jim Black, Jim Hall, Kenny Wollesen, Leni Stern, Lonnie Plaxico, Mark Turner, Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Nate Wood, Scott Colley, Steven Bernstein, Thomas Morgan, Tim Lefebvre, Wayne Krantz.