UPDATE: Aleksandra Kasman won first prize at the Alabama Federation of Music Clubs Collegiate Award Auditions on Saturday, Feb. 28 in Tuscaloosa. Her competitors were students from all the leading music institutions in Alabama. She won a $1,000 prize, as well as an opportunity to compete in this competition on the national level by submitting a recording of her performance. University of Alabama at Birmingham sophomore Aleksandra Kasman of Vestavia Hills won the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists Competition on Saturday, Feb. 7. Her prize includes a performance with the LaGrange Symphony on March 17 and a cash award of $1,500.
Kasman is majoring in music in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music. She is in the UAB Honors College’s University Honors Program.
The LaGrange Symphony Orchestra in Georgia holds this competition annually for collegiate students from six Southeast states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. They rotate the instrument of competition, so the piano category happens every three years, says UAB Professor of Piano Yakov Kasman, who is both Aleksandra’s father and her teacher.
“The opportunity to be a soloist with a professional orchestra in its regular concert season is priceless even for concert artists,” Yakov Kasman said. “It is an absolutely unique opportunity and honor for a student from even the biggest music schools of the nation. We here in the UAB Department of Music are quite proud of her.”
Six years ago, UAB student Kseniia Polstiankina was a winner of that competition. Polstiankina graduated from UAB in 2011 and is now pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Cincinnati Conservatory.