Available now, and on summer’s Amazon best-seller pre-release list in classical releases, “Weight in the Fingertips”, published by Globe Pequot (Backbeat Press) is Inna’s long-awaited memoir of her adventures in music.
“Inna Faliks’s words have the same fluidity and assurance as her piano playing; both are well worth your attention. There are a lot of musician’s memoirs out there; this one, about a piano prodigy turned professional, is a standout. Highly recommended.”
— Anne Midgette
“In her autobiography Weight in the Fingertips, Inna Faliks gives a very personal account of her life, full of vivid, colorful details and written in a very beautiful, rich language. An interesting, informative, and enjoyable reading.”
— Evgeny Kissin, concert pianist and composer
“The story of Inna Faliks’s life is not your everyday book of a great musician’s beginnings. Like life, it is filled with the unexpected, moving from horror to hilarity, despair to hope. I just kept laughing and crying. It is unforgettable and paints a profound portrait of life; what is lost and what is found.”
— Stephen Tobolowsky, actor and author of The Dangerous Animals Club
“A moving, exciting artistic journey by an important female voice, told with honesty and immediacy. I couldn’t put it down— life’s twists can certainly be more surprising than fiction.”
— Jane Seymour, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actress
Before she knew she was Ukranian, Soviet, or Jewish, Inna Faliks knew she was a musician. Growing up in the city of Odessa, the piano became her best friend, and she explored the brilliant, intricate puzzles of Bach’s music and learned to compose under her mother’s watchful eye. At ten, Faliks and her parents moved to Chicago as part of the tide of Jewish refugees who fled the USSR for the West in the 1980s. During the months-long immigration process, she would silently practice on kitchen tables while imagining a full set of piano keys beneath her fingertips. In Weight in the Fingertips, Faliks gives a globe-trotting account of her upbringing as a child prodigy in a Soviet state, the perils of immigration, the struggle of assimilating as an American, years of training with teachers, and her slow and steady rise in the world of classical music. With a warm and playful style, she helps non-musicians understand the experience of becoming a world-renowned concert pianist. The places she grew up, the books she read, the poems she memorized as a child all connect to her sound at the piano, and the way she hears and shapes a musical phrase illuminate classical music and elite performance. She also explores how a person’s humanity makes their art honest and their voice unique, and how the life-long challenge of retaining that voice is fueled by a balance between being a great musician and being a human being. Throughout, Faliks provides powerful insights into the role of music in a world of conflict, change, and hope for a better tomorrow.