ABOUT
"I always loved to draw and wanted to follow in my 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."
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Inna Onofrei (Saakova) is an Armenian-American composer and educator living in the Cleveland area. Her catalogue includes music for piano, choir, chamber ensembles, orchestra, voice, 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. Onofrei is currently working as a freelance composer and arranger, as well as an educator at Musicologie Cleveland Heights.