SASHA LIVSasha Liv...His parents were Holocaust survivors. So in one sense we can say that this man's courage - on full display when, in 1977 he brought his wife and two children to Brooklyn, New York without benefit of a family connection and with less than a hundred dollars in his pocket - is a matter of heredity. "I have always been good with my hands," says Sasha. "So out of necessity I took a factory job making pocketbooks." He struggled. He persevered. Somehow he managed to make ends meet. And all the while he never turned a deaf ear to music. Sasha reminds us, "Music, like all art, is about a very special kind of communication... spirit-to-spirit communication. It can't be turned on and off. Art and me... we could never abandon each other." Eventually a friend told Sasha of a city-sponsored job program that would lead to his training as a diamond setter. Before long Sasha was hired by a jewelry manufacturer who had emigrated from their shared home town and became the first employee of the factory in which he would work and learn for nearly five years. And then the clarity ... Sasha recalls, "At first I couldn't understand how my musician's soul could be satisfied by this strange new profession. And then one day the mist cleared. Creating beautiful pieces of jewelry is a form of artistic self-expression. "Even my earliest designs had the qualities of my musical compositions - they were sleek and deceptively simple. No wasted movement. Never two notes or lines when one could capture my full meaning." Sleek. Simple. And to so many, simply elegant. Five years later, brimming with confidence and in full creative blossom, Sasha founded a new jewelry business. He worked 16 hours a day, six days per week, for well over a decade. Sasha's daring and creative spirit would not be quenched. They drove him to found another jewelry company, which swiftly evolved into a major design and manufacturing facility.
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