Sasha Tarassenko, flute

Meet Sasha

Sasha performs on Show 433.

Alexandra (Sasha) Tarassenko (flute), 17, hails from Norcross, Georgia. She is a flutist in the Emory Symphony Youth Orchestra, Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony. In addition to winning this year’s Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, she has also won Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra’s 2023 Concerto Competition and will be performing with them next season. In 2022, Sasha received first place in the Atlanta Flute Club Competition High School Division.

This past summer, Sasha attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artist Orchestra Program and the Flute Workshop. At BUTI in Lenox, Massachusetts, she performed as principal flute in the Young Artist Orchestra in Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony and Hindemith’s Metamorphosis. She also attended Eastern Music Festival in the summer of 2021. At EMF in Greensboro, North Carolina, she performed Griffes’ Poem for Flute and Piano, was principal
flute in the Orchestra for Dvorak’s 7th Symphony, and piccolo in the Orchestra for Hindemith’s Metamorphosis and Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony.

Sasha has had the opportunity to play in masterclasses for Cynthia Meyers, Linda Toote, Keith Underwood, Carol Wincenc, and Mimi Stillman. As a Russian-American, Sasha participates in the Atlanta Balalaika Society Orchestra, an Eastern-European, community folk ensemble that regularly performs in local venues.

Sasha is currently a senior at Paul Duke STEM High School, where she founded her Tri-M Music Honors Society, and studies with Christina Smith, the principal flute of the Atlanta Symphony. In her spare time, Sasha researches inequality in classical music ensembles, attends Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concerts with her