Inna Faliks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Classical pianist
- Pedagogue
Inna Faliks | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 19, 1978 (age 46) Odessa, Ukraine |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1989–present |
| Website | www |
Inna Faliks is a Ukrainian-American classical pianist, educator, and author.
A touring concert pianist and a Yamaha artist, she holds the posts of Professor of Piano and Head of Piano[1] at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. She has made many concert tours performing both classical and contemporary works around the world, as a soloist and with orchestras.[2] [3]
Composers who have written music specifically for her include Clarice Assad, Lev Zhurbin,[4] Timo Andres, Billy Childs, Richard Danielpour, Paola Prestini, and Peter Golub. In 2019 she performed the world premiere of Danielpour's Eleven Bagatelles for Piano.[5]
Faliks was born in 1978 in Odessa, in today's Ukraine[6] but then part of the Soviet Union. She started piano lessons at the age of five with her piano-teacher mother, Irene Faliks.[7] To escape antisemitism,[1] Faliks (age 10) and her family emigrated as refugees[8] from Odessa to Chicago, with a two-month interim stay in Rome.[9]
In 1994 at age 15 she debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing music by Tchaikovsky.[7][10]
Her musical education after emigrating to the United States in the late 1980s included studying with Boris Petrushansky[5] and with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago; receiving a Graduate Performance Diploma and master's degree at the Peabody Conservatory studying with Leon Fleisher[11] and Ann Schein;[12] receiving an Artist Diploma from the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale in Imola, Italy; and earning a Doctorate with Gilbert Kalish at Stony Brook University.[10][13]
In 2008 she founded a poetry-music series in New York City for the Manhattan Arts Council called Music/Words, which she also curated.[14] It featured classical music performances and live poetry readings.[12]
In the late 2000s and early 2010s she commuted between New York and Chicago as a member of the Northeastern Illinois University piano faculty in Chicago.[12][15]
In 2013 she joined the UCLA faculty,[14] where she is Professor of Piano and Head of Piano.[1] That year she co-starred with Lesley Nicol in two performances of "Admission – One Shilling," a play for pianist and actor based on the life of British pianist Dame Myra Hess.[16]
Faliks has toured with an autobiographical monologue-recital, "Polonaise-Fantasie: The Story of a Pianist."[7][17] Delos Records issued a recording of the show in 2017.
In 2018 she formed the Hollywood Piano Trio with violinist Roberto Cani and cellist Robert deMaine.[5]
Backbeat Books published her memoir Weight in the Fingertips in October 2023.[18]
Personal life
Faliks lives in California with her husband and two children.
In 2021 she wrote of her mother's decision to choose legal suicide in Switzerland after a struggle with cancer.[8]
