Education
She studied at New York"s High School of Performing Arts and later at the Juilliard School with Leonard Rose.
She studied at New York"s High School of Performing Arts and later at the Juilliard School with Leonard Rose.
Born in New York City to an immigrant family, Saks began music lessons at the age of five, first on the piano and then, at age nine, on the cello. She gave prize-winning performances at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Casals Competition in Israel. In 1971, she joined the New York Philharmonic, one of the first women to do southern
However, over the years, Saks grew to dislike playing in an orchestra and, in 1976, accepted a faculty position in the University of Washington"s music department, where she replaced the retiring Eva Heinitz.
In 1982, Saks averred that she missed performing publicly but at the same time observed that Seattle lacked a major outlet for the expression of "classical" music Saks decided to correct that shortcoming and founded the, which has continued to host summer festivals that feature some forty artists every season.
During her thirty-year career as artistic director of the Society, Saks hired some 266 artists, many of whom were housed by Saks and her immediate neighbors. In 2012 Saks chose her replacement.
He was James Ehnes, a former festival artist.