ALEXANDER “SASHA” YAKUB is pursuing his graduate diploma in violin performance under Leila Josefowicz as her first and only student at the Mannes School of Music (The New School) on a full scholarship, where he also completed his masters as a President’s Scholar under Miranda Cuckson in 2022. Sasha holds a bachelors in music from Harvard University, where he received the 2020 Robert Levin Prize in Musical Performance and was a 2019 Harvard Office for the Arts Development Fellow. Sasha was also a 2022 and 2023 Akademist at the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, 2021 Bang On a Can Summer Festival Fellow, 2020 Yamaha Young Artists Competition honorable mention winner, and a 2017 and 2018 Tanglewood Music Center Violin Fellow, during the second year of which he served as concertmaster for the 2018 Myrios recording of “In Seven Days” by Thomas Adès (Kirill Gerstein, soloist). The album containing it, also titled In Seven Days, was the 2021 winner of the contemporary category in the International Classical Music Awards. In November, Sasha served as concertmaster of the Mannes Orchestra for the world premiere recording of Jennifer Higdon’s new flute concerto, The Light That We Can Hear, featuring Valerie Coleman on flute. Previously, Sasha has studied under Lynn Chang, James Buswell, Minna Diner, and Giovina Sessions.

As part of Duo 404, a violin/keyboards duo with Forrest Eimold specializing in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Sasha has traveled to the UK to study with Thomas Adès at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove. Sasha’s other notable public performances include the world premiere of Paul Mortilla’s violin concerto “Animal Brain: ad infinitum perplexus confixium” with New Music New Haven at the Yale School of Music and the performance of “Synchronisms No. 9” at the Harvard Music Department’s memorial concert for Prof. Emeritus Mario Davidovsky. Sasha lives in New York, where he contracts with Lincoln Center Stage and the American Composers Alliance, and serves as concertmaster of the BeComEnsemble.