About me
"I always loved to draw and wanted to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps to become an artist, but then I fell in love with the music. I discovered a way to paint not on a canvas but with sound in the air. My personal motto is hands are my brushes, sound is my paint and air is my canvas."
Inna Onofrei is an Armenian-American composer and educator living in the Cleveland area. Her catalogue includes music for piano, choir, chamber ensembles, orchestra, solo instruments, as well as electronic and electro-acoustic works. Onofrei's music has been performed in Russia, the United States of America, Belgium and Greece. Among the awards and prizes Onofrei has received for her compositions are Stavropol State Competition for Young Composers, KatePublishing Composition Competition, and HerVoice Composition Competition. One of Onofrei's compositions, written in 1997 about her hometown, Nevinnomyssk, was adopted as the town's anthem.
In 2002, Onofrei earned her Bachelor's Degree in Musical Theory and Composition from Stavropol State College of Arts. In 2011, she earned her Masters of Music degree in Piano Performance from Cleveland State University, where she studied piano with 2007 Grammy Award-winning pianist Angelin Chang. She later went on to pursue her true passion, and earned her Master's of Music degree in composition from Cleveland State University in 2018.
In 2020, in collaboration with Maisy Byerly (illustrator) and Cheryl Williams (writer), Onofrei published an original children's piano album, "Lola's Adventures", inspired by her little dog, Lola. The album is designed to help young students improve their technical and musical skills while having fun learning unique pieces, accompanied by fun little poems and beautiful illustrations.
"The First was a setting of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Lullaby" by Inna Onofrei. It's easy to see how the work would be favored: the cool, consonant harmonies and songlike refrain appeals to pop sensibilities and art purists. The setting by Cleveland Based, Armenian-American composer fits pleasingly into the contours of Tennyson's verse, underscoring the text's oscillating rhythm and upholstering it in a moody sonority."
"Inna Onofrei's Rain in summer a gorgeous, atmospheric piece without much text, so the interest becomes much more about the use of the voices to create the effect of beautiful summer rain" - Gregory Ristow
Daniel Hathaway, ClevelandClassical.com
Landon Hegedus, Chicago Classical Review