Inna Faliks

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 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.

Composers who have written music specifically for her include Clarice Assad, Lev Zhurbin, 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.

Early life

Faliks was born in 1978 in Odessa, in today's Ukraine but then part of the Soviet Union. She started piano lessons at the age of five with her piano-teacher mother, Irene Faliks. To escape antisemitism, from Odessa to Chicago, with a two-month interim stay in Rome.

In 1994 at age 15 she debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing music by Tchaikovsky.

Her musical education after emigrating to the United States in the late 1980s included studying with Boris Petrushansky and Ann Schein; receiving an Artist Diploma from the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale in Imola, Italy; and earning a Doctorate with Gilbert Kalish at Stony Brook University.

In 2008 she founded a poetry-music series in New York City for the Manhattan Arts Council called Music/Words, which she also curated. It featured classical music performances and live poetry readings.

In 2013 she joined the UCLA faculty,

Faliks has toured with an autobiographical monologue-recital, "Polonaise-Fantasie: The Story of a Pianist." 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.

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.