SIROTA (the title means “Orphan” in Russian, which could be coincidental) is a composition for solo piano that incorporates a recording made by cantor Gershon Sirota in Warsaw in 1908. Often referred to as “The Jewish Caruso”, Gershon Sirota was born in the Ukraine, and served as cantor in Odessa, Vilnius, and in Warsaw, where he perished in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The piece features a fragmented melody line that is driven by a relentless limping pattern comprised of a falling and rising D-minor chord. After the climax, the pianist’s role becomes that of an accompanist at a synagogue, where Sirota is chanting prayers for Rosh Hashannah (the Jewish New Year).
The World Premiere was performed by Inna Faliks at the Highland Park Community House in Highland Park, IL, on February 27, 2011
Music/Words is live on 98.7 fm WFMT radio in Chicago this month. Tune in to hear great music alongside accomplished and brilliant poets reading from their work:
April 13, 3 pm – Schostakovich Quintet with New Millenium Orchestra members, Inna Faliks and Jasmine Lin + Jesse Ball, poet
April 20, 3 pm – Matt Hagle, music of Brahms, Chopin and Debussy, + Regan Good, poet
April 27, 3 pm – Inna Faliks, music of Gubaidulina, Liszt and Chopin, + Sandra Beasley poet
Happy Spring! Welcome to my new web site. Please check it out for upcoming performances, projects, music, recordings, etc.
Below are some upcoming concerts, starting with this Monday night at 8 pm Central Time, 98.7 fm WFMT radio in Chicago, or www.wfmt.com to hear me play on Mondays Live! Music will include Schubert, Beethoven and Ljova’s beautiful Sirota for piano and recorded chorus, recently composed for me.
In other live radio upcoming events – Music/Words, my poetry music series, is live on WFMT this month! Tune in to hear great music alongside accomplished and brilliant poets reading from their work. More i
April 13, 3 pm – Schostakovich Quintet with New Millenium Orchestra members, Inna Faliks and Jasmine Lin + Jesse Ball, poet
April 20, 3 pm – Matt Hagle, music of Brahms, Chopin and Debussy, + Regan Good, poet
April 27, 3 pm – Inna Faliks, music of Gubaidulina, Liszt and Chopin, + Sandra Beasley poet
On April 29th, hear fantastic Boston violinist Sharan Leventhal and myself at the Cornelia Street Cafe NYC, corneliastreetcafe.com, joined by award winning poets Susan Miller and LB Thompson
Finally, May 1st bring the Chicago premiere of Music/Words to Pianoforte Chicago – with Mark Levine, poet extraordinaire, and myself at the piano.
More exciting things are to come in the summer, featuring a Bargemusic recital on June 30th with the NYC premiere of Ljova’s Sirota. Stay tuned, and happy spring and summer!
On Friday April 29th at New York City’s Cornelia Street Café, at 6pm, the first Music/Words of 2011 will feature Inna Faliks, piano, Sharan Leventhal, violin; with Susan Miller and LB Thompson, poets. The varied program will include Schubert’s Sonata in a minor opus 143, Concert Piece (1959) by Seymour Shifrin (1926-1979), and Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano. Cornelia Street Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling 212-989-9319.
On Sunday, May 1 at 3pm, Music/Words featuring Ms. Faliks and poet Mark Levine will take place as part of Pianoforte Foundation’s Pure Piano series in Chicago, IL. Pianoforte is located at 408 S. Michigan Ave. and can be reached at 312-291-0291 or at www.pianofortefoundation.org.
Since winning the Kranischsteiner Musikpreis at the 1984 International Contemporary Music Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, violinist Sharan Leventhal has built an international reputation as a champion of contemporary music. Her more than 100 premieres include works written by Gunther Schuller, Virgil Thomson, William Kraft, Pauline Oliveros, Taina León, and Simon Bainbridge.
LB Thompson’s poetry chapbook Tendered Notes: Poems of Love and Money won the Center for Book Arts’ annual chapbook competition in 2003. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Pool, Lyric, The Women’s Review of Books and The New Yorker. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University and was a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her essay about her long period of illness, “Torpor: Metaphors of Hibernation,” appeared in Prairie Schooner in 2009. Ms. Thompson teaches English to college freshmen, works as a free-lance copyeditor and lives on the North Fork of Long Island. She recently completed a poetry manuscript entitled The Dark Skirt of the Universe, and is at work on a novel and a collection of essays.
Susan L. Miller has published poetry in Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Calyx, Commonweal, Meridian, and Sewanee Theological Review, and has poems forthcoming in the anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality. She has twice won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for poetry. She teaches Poetry and Expository Writing as a Russell Teaching Fellow at Rutgers University, where she also helps coordinate and curate an LGBT reading series and a reading series of religious writing. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
Mark Levine has written three books of poems, “Debt” (1993), “Enola Gay” (2000), and “The Wilds” (2006), as well as a book of nonfiction, “F5″ (2007). His poems have been in many magazines and anthologies, and he has written nonfiction prose for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, and other places. He is on the faculty of poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Brooklyn.
Called “A delight to hear” and “riveting” by Phil Greenfield of the Baltimore Sun, Inna Faliks (www.innafaliks.com) played her debut with the Chicago Symphony at age 15, and performs regularly at major venues in US and abroad. A winner of many international competitions including the 2005 International Pro Musicis Award , Ms. Faliks has recently performed at Carnegie Hall, Paris’s Salle Cortot, Metropolitan Museum, Bargemusic a recital tour of Russia, and in multiple TV and radio broadcasts worldwide. Her CD, Sound of Verse, has been enthusiastically reviewed this year by Gramophone, American Record Guide and other press. Recent festival appearances include Verbier, Taos, and Brevard. She performed the NY and LA premieres of 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg – variations by contemporary composers on Bach’s Aria. Her former teachers include Gil Kalish, Leon Fleisher and Boris Petrushansky.
On Friday April 29th, 2011, at New York City’s Cornelia Street Café, Music/Words will feature Inna Faliks, piano, Sharan Leventhal, violin; and Susan Miller and LB Thompson, poets. The varied program will include Schubert’s Sonata in a minor opus 143, Concert Piece (1959) by Seymour Shifrin (1926-1979), and Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano. Cornelia Street Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling 212-989-9319.
Since winning the Kranischsteiner Musikpreis at the 1984 International Contemporary Music Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, violinist Sharan Leventhal has built an international reputation as a champion of contemporary music. Her more than 100 premieres include works written by Gunther Schuller, Virgil Thomson, William Kraft, Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, and Simon Bainbridge.
LB Thompson’s poetry chapbook Tendered Notes: Poems of Love and Money won the Center for Book Arts’ annual chapbook competition in 2003. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Pool, Lyric, The Women’s Review of Books and The New Yorker. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University and was a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her essay about her long period of illness, “Torpor: Metaphors of Hibernation,” appeared in Prairie Schooner in 2009. Ms. Thompson teaches English to college freshmen, works as a free-lance copyeditor and lives on the North Fork of Long Island. She recently completed a poetry manuscript entitled The Dark Skirt of the Universe, and is at work on a novel and a collection of essays.
Susan L. Miller has published poetry in Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Calyx, Commonweal, Meridian, and Sewanee Theological Review, and has poems forthcoming in the anthology Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality. She has twice won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for poetry. She teaches Poetry and Expository Writing as a Russell Teaching Fellow at Rutgers University, where she also helps coordinate and curate an LGBT reading series and a reading series of religious writing. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
Called “A delight to hear” and “riveting” by Phil Greenfield of the Baltimore Sun, Inna Faliks (www.innaonline.com) played her debut with the Chicago Symphony at age 15, and performs regularly at major venues in US and abroad. A winner of many international competitions including the 2005 International Pro Musicis Award , Ms. Faliks has recently performed at Carnegie Hall, Paris’s Salle Cortot, Metropolitan Museum, Bargemusic a recital tour of Russia, and in multiple TV and radio broadcasts worldwide. Her CD, Sound of Verse, has been enthusiastically reviewed this year by Gramophone, American Record Guide and other press. Recent festival appearances include Verbier, Taos, and Brevard. She performed the NY and LA premieres of 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg – variations by contemporary composers on Bach’s Aria. Her former teachers include Gil Kalish, Leon Fleisher and Boris Petrushansky.
On Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 8:00 PM, in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, as part of their 45th Anniversary year, Pro Musicis presents pianist Inna Faliks, winner of the 2005 Pro Musicis International Award.
Program:
Ludwig van Beethoven, Fantasy in G minor, Op. 77
Franz Schubert, Sonata in A minor, Op. Posth. 143
Franz Liszt, from Transcendental Etudes, No. 11 & 10
Sofia Gubaidulina, Chaconne
Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la Nuit, Poems for Piano
Tickets $25 (seniors/students $15) at the Box Office or online at www.CarnegieHall.org or CarnegieCharge 212-968-4288
On February 27th at 2pm, Chicago’s Spertus Institute presents Pianist Inna Faliks in a a rare musical exploration of three outstanding Jewish composers. She’ll highlight 19th-century composer Franny Mendelssohn, 20th-century master George Gershwin, and acclaimed contemporary composer Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, who will join her for a musical dialogue. Ljova’s influences include klezmer, jazz, and classical music, whose styles he blends into something wonderful and new.
Inna Faliks is one of today’s most passionate and poetic young pianists. She performs in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Salle Cortot in Paris, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall. She is curator and founder of the poetry-music series Music/Words.
Ljova was hailed by Billboard Magazine as “one of New York’s fastest-rising composers.” A Moscow native, he moved to New York in 1990. Today he arranges music for Yo Yo Ma, the Kronos Quartet, Jay-Z, and others and composes original music. He also performs as a violist in his own group, Ljova and the Kontraband.
This program takes place at the Highland Park Community House, 1991 Sheridan Road, Highland Park, IL. Tickets are $18 | $10 for Spertus members | $8 for students.
Music/Words needs your help to flourish. If you enjoyed one of our performances live or on the radio, or if you just like what we are doing and wish to make a tax-deductible donation, please consider writing a check to The Field, the fiscal sponsor of Music/Words and a non-profit. Please send this tax-deductible donation to 12 West 103rd st. apt 33 New York NY 10025. Or visit www.thefield.org to make an on-line donation. When writing a check or donating online, please specify “Sponsored Artist Inna Faliks.”
The Field is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the New York City performing arts community. Contributions made to The Field and earmarked for Inna Faliks are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. For more information about The Field contact: The Field, 161 Sixth Avenue, 14th Floor, New York NY 10013, (212) 691-6969, fax: (212)255-2053, www.thefield.org.
A copy of The Field’s latest annual report may be obtained, upon request, from The Field or from the Office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
Music/Words begins its third season on Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 6pm with a performance featuring pianist Inna Faliks on the piano along with readings by poets Sandra Beasley and Oni Buchanan at New York’s Cornelia Street Café. The varied program will include Chaconne by composer Sofia Gubaidulina, two Liszt Etudes, the short work Cathedral Waterfall (from the Etudes) by Augusta Read Thomas and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit (which is featured on Faliks’ recent CD release, Sound of Verse (MSR Records). Cornelia Street Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling 212-989-9319.
Oni Buchanan is the author of Spring, a Poetry Honors winner of the 2009 Massachusetts Book Awards and selected by Mark Doty for the 2007 National Poetry Series. Her first poetry book, What Animal, was published in 2003 by the University of Georgia Press. Oni is also a concert pianist.
Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Joy Harjo and published by W. W. Norton. Her first collection, Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize. Her nonfiction has been featured in the Washington Post Magazine and she is working on Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, forthcoming from Crown. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Inna Faliks is the featured pianist on this program as well as being the producer and curator of Music/Words. Read about Inna and the other musicians who have performed in past Music/Words programs.
Mastery of the piano…A powerful pianist with technique to burn, a wonderful variety of tone colors at all dynamic levels. Her Ravel is reminiscent of Argerich EMI recording… and the Rachmaninoff reminds me of the early Van Cliburn recording made in Russia with a little more boldness.
La Campanella, Paganini - LisztInna Faliks4:53
Rzewski "The People United Shall Never Be Defeated" (excerpt, improvised cadenza)Inna Faliks8:36
Beethoven Eroica VariationsInna Faliks9:59
Gershwin: Prelude 3 in E-flat MinorInna Faliks1:25
Mozart Piano Concerto #20 - IIInna Faliks with Chamber Orchestra of St. Matthews10:27
Gaspard de la Nuit (1908) : Scarbo - RavelInna Faliks9:07
Inna recently recorded SIROTA for solo piano and historical recording by Lev ‘Ljova’ Zhurbin, live at the studios of WFMT in Chicago, April 4 2011. The work was commissioned by Inna Faliks and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies; and dedicated to Inna Faliks & Gershon Sirota.
Happy Spring! Welcome to my new web site. Please check it out for upcoming performances, projects, music, recordings, etc.
