Sacha’s first memory of singing is for the Christmas pageant at St. Nicholas School in Jersey City, NJ. It was the first time she wore makeup (red lipstick and blush), the first time she remembers wearing heels (one inch mary jane patent leather), and she got to stand in the front row of the kindergarten section.

From that point on, she wanted to be a surgeon, a fireman, a figure skater, a gymnast, and a rock star. Also, a teacher, a fashion model, a fashion designer, an artist, and a dancer. She realized that an actor gets to do all of these. More, even. Thus began her secret dream to be an actor. She was too afraid to admit to her parents what she wanted to do, and so found it very easy to reassure them that she just wanted to do it ‘on the side.’ Her parents, being smarter than a seven-year old, were aware of her artistic aspirations, and gave her piano lessons, voice lessons, and dance lessons.

It was the piano lessons that stuck until she injured her hand in high school, pushing open a cafeteria door, missing the brass plate, and pushing on the plate glass instead. This long story made short ended with her having lost sensation in two halves of two fingers on her left hand and a loss of control of the second joint on one of her fingers. Because this was the only creative outlet she had at the time, being a geek extraordinaire complete with braids of too-long hair, senior citizen glasses, and a hopeless sense of fashion, losing her ability to compete in concert piano hit her hard.

Mr. Napoli, the psychology and music teacher and conductor of the chamber and concert choirs at her school, suggested she still try to play. For his choir. And maybe sing. Behind a solid wall of shyness was a tiny bean of hope, and so she joined the choir. Sacha was part of a cadre of accompanists and in the second soprano section of the concert choir, and later, the chamber choir. It was boot camp for anyone who wanted to learn how to sing and it was wonderful. She went from member and accompanist to section leader, to some minor solo lines, to conducting the chamber choir in an a-cappella tribute to swing era music.

It wasn’t until she’d left high school and was solidly pursuing pre-med studies that it occurred to her that she might enjoy singing by herself. A lead role in the Apple Tree her freshman year of college didn’t tell her that, nor did the lead role in the Vagabond King give her an inkling that she could do it professionally. It wasn’t until a dear friend asked her “well, what do you want to do?” that she paused to think about it at all. She’d been doing what she thought she was supposed to do, and being asked what she wanted to do was a revelation.

She changed her major that week to music. She studied voice, discovered she was a lyric soprano, and found a love of powerhouse legit ballads and French opera arias. She built a repertoire, a book she could carry into auditions, a relationship with two wonderful teachers, mentors and friends, graduated by the skin of her teeth with a degree in music, got married to that dear friend who asked her what she wanted to do, and started auditioning after they got back from their honeymoon.

The honeymoon was a trip to Europe with the Rutgers University Choir, where she and her dear husband got to sing for their supper. She came home and got right down to the business of audition and landed her first job within three months, as a singer-dancer in the Fulton Opera House’s production of A Christmas Carol. Today, you can find her hard at work in the quest to play all the people she’s ever wanted to be. It’s so fun. Maybe the funnest thing in the world.