Splitting her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn, Flutist Sarah Steranka enjoys a multifaceted career as a recitalist, chamber musician, and advocate for new and experimental music. Since making her solo debut with the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic at the age of nineteen, she has dedicated her career to exploring the innovative work of living composers and pushing the boundaries of her instruments. Steranka has premiered works by Ramin Akhavijou, Hannah Selin, Brittany J. Green, Marilyn Shrude, Elizabeth Brown, Erin Rogers, Nicole Mitchell, Nancy Galbraith, Lauren Siess, and countless others.  
 
Steranka has presented programs of new and experimental music at the SPLICE Festival, the SCI National Student Conference, the Mid-Atlantic Flute Festival, Music on the Edge’s Beyond Microtonal Music Festival, the New Jersey Flute Fair, the Pittsburgh Festival of New Music, and the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Re:Sound festival. Her recordings of solo and chamber works have been published by Sound Silence Thought, Albany Records, and Naxos, as well as have been self-published by countless composers. 
 
As a symphony musician, Steranka is the second flute of the Westmoreland Symphony and has also appeared as a guest with the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, the Erie Philharmonic, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. In addition, she is a core member of the nationally recognized new music collective Kamraton, where she plays flute and piccolo, as well as alto and bass flutes. She also makes up one-half of the acclaimed Brooklyn-based group SydeBoob Duo, a group dedicated to commissioning new works for flute and voice, as well as amplifying the voices of women in the arts. ​ 
 
In addition to maintaining a private studio of 30+ students through the Steranka Flute Studio, LLC, Steranka maintains faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University and Mercyhurst University. She has also appeared as a guest artist and lecturer at Lawrence University, Penn State University, Duke University, West Virginia University’s International Flute Symposium, and Columbus State University. Steranka’s instructional work has also included teaching actors to play the flute for film roles. She is passionate about teaching music to students of all ages and abilities, as well as finds joy and inspiration in the power music has to strengthen a community and the topics she discussed as a panelist on the NFA 2021 National Convention discussion panel “Community-Minded Musicianship.” 
 
Sarah Steranka holds a master's degree from Duquesne University, where she studied with Jennifer Steele and performed with the Triano Woodwind Quintet under the artistic guidance of James Gorton. She earned a BFA at Carnegie Mellon University, where her principal teachers were Alberto Almarza and Jeanne Baxtresser.