Inna Faliks - Stranger Things - Piano Works From a Young Refugee’s Backpack - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Manuscripts Don't Burn is a famous line in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita - the retelling of Faust, the 20th century cult novel of an artist surviving in a Totalitarian regime, the love story, the burlesque with giant, vodka drinking cats and vampiric theater administrators. I first read the book as a kid, growing up in Soviet Odesa. I took it with me when my parents and I immigrated, as Jewish refugees running from antisemitism, through Austria and Italy, to the United States.  Crossing the border, I worried that guards would discover my book, and I would be severely punished. Throughout the years, the book played a role in my life. My childhood best friend from Odesa reread the book in adulthood and decided to find me - we are now together for 20 years, with two kids.  I read the book to my mother as she was dying from brain cancer.  Bulgakov's novel weaves through my own newly published memoir, Weight in the Fingertips - A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage (Backbeat Books, October 2023). I consider this very personal recording to be something of a mirror image to my memoir, as it intertwines the literal images from Master and Margarita with more autobiographical themes and layers. The five premieres, written for me and recorded here, are vastly different in styles and esthetic. The understated, elegant Master and Margarita Suite by Veronika Krausas complements the wild, theatrical, brooding and extended techniques-filled InchManuscripts Don't BurnInch by Maya Miro Johnson.  Mike Garson's Psalm to Odesa, an improvisatory ballad, with bits of my own improvisation based a well known Odesan song, sets off InchVoicesInch by Ljova, a piece for piano and historical recordings of Jewish cantorial and klezmer music. Both take me back to my home city, currently under vicious attack, like the rest of Ukraine. The poetry I recite, sing and hum while perfo

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