Pianist Aleksandra Kasman, a junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has achieved second place nationally in The American Prize in Piano Performance (Concerto) competition this year.
Kasman, 20, of Vestavia Hills, was selected for her performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1. She was selected from applications from across the United States. Kasman is a music major in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music and a member of the Honors College’s University Honors Program. She studies piano with her father, Yakov Kasman, UAB professor of piano and artist-in-residence.
The American Prize is a series of new, nonprofit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.
Kasman is earning many accolades while still a student. Her awards include the National Federation of Music Clubs’ National Stillman-Kelley Award, silver medal at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz, second place and Young Jury Winner Award at the Arthur Fraser International Piano Competition, and PianoArts North American Competition Scholarship Award.
Her 2015 first-place wins include the NFMC National Collegiate Piano Competition, LaGrange Symphony Young Artists Competition, High Point University Inaugural Piano Competition and IKIF MacKenzie International Competition in New York. She gave solo recitals in the U.S., France, Ukraine, Russia and Japan and performed with the Alabama Symphony, LaGrange Symphony, the Symphonic Orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, with which she played five concertos. Kasman joined her father in performances of the Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals” with the Brevard Symphony, Florida; with the New York Chamber Players; and with the Hendersonville Symphony, North Carolina. Her recent engagements include solo recitals in New York and Washington, D.C., and numerous duo-piano performances with Yakov Kasman in the U.S., Russia and South Korea.