Sasha Berliner

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Sasha Berliner (born June 20, 1998) is an American vibraphonist and composer from San Francisco. She grew up in the Bay Area and started playing drums at age eight. At first she focused on rock and indie music and played in the San Francisco Rock Project with her family.

When she was 13, she tried out for the Oakland School for the Arts and ended up choosing the vibraphone, which hooked her on harmony and melody. She pursued the jazz track there and also worked as a singer and multi-instrumentalist. In 2013 she arranged a version of Beck’s “Please Leave a Light On When You Go” for the San Francisco Rock Project and ran a fashion blog inspired by her mother’s boutique.

Berliner joined the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars and recorded her EP Gold at age 16. She finished high school in 2016 and moved to New York City to study at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In 2017 she attended the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, where Tyshawn Sorey invited her to join his sextet the next year. She spoke out in 2017 about sexism in the jazz world, publishing an open letter that gained broad attention during the #MeToo era.

In 2018 she performed as one of the youngest bandleaders at NYC Winter Jazzfest, and her openness about gender issues earned notable media coverage. SFJAZZ Magazine named her one of ten rising women instrumentalists to know. She received the LetterOne Rising Stars Jazz Award for North America in 2018, which included a seven-city tour.

Berliner released her first full-length album, Azalea, in 2019 after signing with Vater Percussion and Marimba One. She has performed with many acclaimed artists and earned recognition in DownBeat’s Critics Poll as a rising star in 2020 and 2022, and in the Readers Poll for 2019–2022. Her second full-length album, Onyx, was released in 2022 on J.M.I. Recordings. She also released a live album with Tabula Rasa from her 2021 residency at the SWR New Jazz Meeting in Mannheim, Germany. Her third studio album, Fantome, came out in 2025 on Outside In Music.