B I O G R A P H Y
Pianist Sasha Kasman Laude’s playing is praised by the Palm Beach Arts Paper as “powerful and vivid” and having “such an abundance of intelligence that it can only be described as relentless” (Ludwig van Toronto). She is in demand as a soloist and pedagogue with engagements across three continents.
Kasman Laude appears as a guest artist and teacher at the invitation of such festivals as International Keyboard Institute and Festival, Southeastern Piano Festival, Utah State University Summer Piano Festival, Kyiv International Summer Academy (Ukraine), Busan International Music Academy (South Korea), and PianoCity Milano (Italy). She has given solo recitals at such major venues as Steinway Hall in New York City, Yamaha Ginza Hall in Tokyo, Salle Cortot in Paris, and Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. In 2019, she was named a Young Artist-in-Residence of National Public Radio’s Performance Today, hosted by Fred Child. Her playing and interviews have been broadcast on NPR stations nationwide. This year, Kasman Laude performs for the Birmingham Chamber Music Society, Eisendrath Series of Ann Arbor, MI, InConcert Series of Apalachicola, FL, International Keyboard Odyssiad and Festival, Vivace International Music Festival, and pianoSonoma, and is a soloist with the Dayton and Ann Arbor symphony orchestras.
Kasman Laude has triumphed in numerous international competitions; most recently, she became a finalist in the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition (Canada). She has been a soloist with over a dozen symphony orchestras in the USA and abroad, including the Juilliard Orchestra and Calgary Symphony, and has appeared seven times with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. She has worked under the batons of maestros including Jeffrey Kahane, Neal Gittleman, Gregory Vajda, Jeffrey Milarsky, Yaniv Attar, Christopher Confessore, Jacques Cohen, Mykola Dyadura, Nazar Yakobenchuk, and Natalia Ponomarchuk. Kasman Laude is an advocate and experienced performer of contemporary music, premiering works of living composers Stewart Goodyear, Marc Migó, Nathan Daughtrey, Zachary Detrick, and Eric Mobley. In addition to her vibrant solo playing, Kasman Laude is an enthusiastic chamber musician and has collaborated with such distinguished players as Martin Beaver, Blake Pouliot, the Viano and Aeolus String Quartets, and the New York Chamber Players. She and her father Yakov Kasman have been an internationally-touring piano duo for fourteen years.
A native of Moscow, Kasman Laude began her musical studies with her parents, acclaimed pianists and pedagogues Yakov and Tatiana Kasman. She continued studying with her father at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and received an MM degree from the Juilliard School, studying with Robert McDonald. In 2023, Kasman Laude received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Logan Skelton, won the school concerto competition, and received the School of Music, Theater, and Dance's top graduation honor, the Earl V. Moore Award.
Kasman Laude maintains her own private piano studio and has lectured and taught masterclasses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lee University, Utah State University, Bowling Green State University, and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. She is passionate about music outreach and has given over one hundred educational performances in schools and community venues in large part as a Fellow of PianoArts of Wisconsin. In her leisure time, she enjoys beating her husband in chess and transcribing Soviet film music.
Beginning in fall 2023, Kasman Laude is looking forward to joining the faculty of Utah State University as Assistant Professor of Piano. For more information about USU's flourishing piano program and audition information, please visit https://cca.usu.edu/music/programs/piano-performance-and-pedagogy-bm.