Sasha Scolnik-Brower is a cellist/ conductor based in Amsterdam and Boston. In the spring of 2023, Sasha led a production of Rossini’s La scala di seta with the Dutch National Opera Academy at the Bredeweg Festival in Amsterdam, his debut with the Noord Nederlands Orkest in a program of Schubert and Sibelius, and assisted Patrick Lange in a new production of Der Freischütz at Theater an der Wien. Other upcoming projects include serving as assistant conductor to James MacMillan with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and to Clark Rundell with the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest. As a part of the Dutch National Master’s of Orchestral Conducting, Sasha has also conducted the Residentie Orkest, Phion Orkest, and the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, working with Kenneth Montgomery, Jac van Steen and Ed Spanjaard.
Sasha is a graduate of The Juilliard School where he studied conducting with David Robertson, served as the assistant conductor for Peter Oundjian, Mark Wigglesworth, and Itzhak Perlman, and led concerts with the Juilliard Orchestra. From 2018-2019, Sasha was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival where he received the Robert Spano Conducting Prize. He was the longest-serving Music Director of Harvard’s Bach Society Orchestra (2014-2017) and the Music Director of the Harvard College Opera’s 2017 production of Le Nozze di Figaro, sung in the original Italian for the first time in the organization’s history. Sasha has also served as the cover conductor for the Atlanta Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestras.
As a cellist, Sasha has performed as a soloist on tour with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra to Korea and The Philippines playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto and with the Boston Symphony in Symphony Hall with the Schumann Cello Concerto. He has attended music festivals including Marlboro Music and Yellow Barn. He graduated cum laude from the Harvard College – New England Conservatory Dual Degree program where he studied cello with Paul Katz and received a B.A. in English.
