Music/Words is: Interdisciplinary series founded by pianist Inna Faliks that unite classical musicians with contemporary poets to create joint performances.



"Poetry…A kind of panoramic vision that looks ahead almost to the world of Gustav Mahler emerged in Faliks’ performance of Beethoven’s sonata opus 111…"
-Joseph McLellan, Washington Post

"A delight to hear… Riveting… passion and playfulness, warmly poetic."
-Phil Greenfield, Baltimore Sun

"Inna Faliks began with Bach's Fugue in G Sharp Minor, which projected a great conviction and majestic conception from the first note. Beethoven's Bagatelles op.126 also demonstrated a mature musical personality, which revealed the six miniatures and their inner content sharply defined without exaggeration. In the Sonata op 111 Faliks played with the courage to take risks and with an expressive intensity, which went beyond her technical perfection and showed a musician at rest within herself, as she constructed her interpretation with clear vision."
-General - Anzeiger, Bonn, Germany

"Faliks..who performs all over the world..knocked the socks of this difficult work, with focused accuracy and zero histrionics. The orchestra responded with equal poise."
-The State , South Carolina

" Faliks filled Chopin's Sonata No. 2 with fervent thrust, lyrical warmth and concentration, and extracting seductive charm and gleaming sonorities from Liszt's "La Campanella." …she molded a boldly inflected performance of Beethoven”
-The Cleveland Plain Dealer



Young Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most passionately committed, exciting and deeply poetic artists of her generation. After her acclaimed debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 15, she has performed on many of the world's great stages, with numerous orchestras, in solo appearances, and with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin and Keith Lockhart. Critics praise her "courage to take risks, expressive intensity and technical perfection" (General Anzeiger, Bonn), "Infusing every note with brilliance and personality," (Hilton Head Competition Review), “poetry and panoramic vision” (Washington Post) , “riveting passion, playfulness” (Baltimore Sun) and her "virtuosity, humor, lyricism and a way to make every note an important part of the texture of the music."(Free Times, South Carolina)

Ms. Faliks has performed numerous recitals and concerti in prestigious venues in the US as well as in France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, and Japan. She has been featured on WQXR, W-NYC, WFMT and many international television broadcasts, and has performed in major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paris’ Salle Cortot, Chicago's Orchestra Hall, Boston's Pickman Hall, and in numerous important festivals such as Verbier, Brevard, Taos, Bargemusic, and Chautauqua. She has played concerti under the batons of many conductors including Leonard Slatkin, Keith Lockhart, Edward Polochick, Stephen Alltop, Anne Harrigan, Jed Gaylin, and many others. Her chamber music partnerships include work with Colin Carr, Wendy Warner, Nathaniel Rosen, Nina Beilina and others. Ms. Faliks is a Yamaha Artist.

She was the first prize winner of the coveted International Pro Musicis Award 2005. Other prizes include first prizes in Hilton Head International Competition, Grand prize in St. Charles International Competition, 2nd prize in the Val Tidone International Piano Competition, First Prize in the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition, and 1st prize in the Yale Gordon Competition at the Peabody. Earlier competition prizes include winning the Chopin Kosciuszko Competition, MTNA Yamaha National Competition, and Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, among others.

Ms. Faliks' September 08 tour of Russia was highly praised. Other 2008-09 appearances included recitals at Carnegie Hall, at Salle Cortot in Paris, at Bargemusic and Rockefeller University in New York, Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, at Pianoforte Chicago Series, on WFMT live performance series with cellist Wendy Warner and a live broadcast recital from LACMA's Sundays Live in Los Angeles, concerti with the Topeka Symphony, Concert Artists of Baltimore, Augustana Arts, and Highland Park Strings, recitals in Trailmix and Shandelee Festivals, as well as in South Carolina, in Arkansas, in Mississippi. Recent appearances also include performances with the South Carolina Philharmonic and in Bonn, Germany.

This season, Ms. Faliks presented the West Coast premiere of 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg", new variations by contemporary composers on Bach's Aria, at the Art and Music Series in LACMA, Los Angeles; she gave the New York premiere of the work at Bargemusic. Committed to audience communication and education, as well as to new and rarely heard music, Ms. Faliks has been performing the unknown piano works of Russian poet Boris Pasternak, presenting his music at a lecture recital in the University of Chicago. At the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies, she presented "Three Jewish Composers- Three Centuries", giving the North American premiere of Ilya Levinson's Shtetle Suite. Her CD on MSR Classics, Sound of Verse, was released in summer 09, featuring music of Boris Pasternak, Rachmaninoff and Ravel.

Ms. Faliks is the founder and curator of the new interdisciplinary series Music/Words, featuring live poetry and classical music performances in NYC. She is a featured performer at the Streaming Museum, http://www.streamingmuseum.org, a global online multimedia arts space; her performance has been selected by BBC to be showcased across the UK in 17 locations. She is a member of the piano faculty of North Eastern Illinois University in Chicago. Ms. Faliks holds an Artist Diploma from the prestigious Accademia Pianistica Internazionale, where she studied with Boris Petrushansky. She recently received her Doctorate at Stony Brook University, studying with Gilbert Kalish. Her other teachers include Leon Fleisher and Ann Schein at Peabody Conservatory. Ms. Faliks moved to the United States at age 10 from Odessa, Ukraine, where her mother Irene was her first teacher. She studied and later was assistant to renowned teacher Emilio del Rosario.

Jesse Ball (1978-) is an American poet and novelist. He is the author of Samedi the Deafness, released last year by Random House and shortlisted for the 2007 Believer Book Award. His first volume, March Book, appeared in 2004, followed by Vera & Linus (2006), and Parables and Lies (2008). His drawings were published in 2006 in Iceland in the volume Og svo kom nottin. He won the Plimpton Prize in 2008 for his novella, The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr. His verse appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006. He is an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.