TUESDAY 11 JUNE 2024, 7.30PM
LUBOMYR MELNYK + ELL KENDALL
Lubomyr Melnyk is one of the foremost pianists of our time. With his extraordinary technique, he paints never-before-heard landscapes of sound, with his fingers playing occasionally at super-sonic speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand.
"I have devoted my entire life to developing new visions in piano playing .. to pushing the boundaries of piano technique... physically, and musically .... and spritually. When I play, I bring to the world a new voice of the piano, with new dimensions of physical playing, and new dimensions of drama that require a stupendous technical ability to create... and the all-encompassing spirituality of the unity between the Body, the Soul... and Time. My music brings a continuation of the true Martial Arts into the realm of the Piano, to attain the highest levels of our human potential... I strive to give the piano Life, and its voice, a living power that will take both me and the listener, into beautiful and wondrous dimensions of being .... continuously expanding the boundaries of the pianist to far, far beyond the normal professional speeds and the normal professional virtuosity ... it means taking myself and the piano, physically, into another yet beautiful dimension ... where my fingers have turned into air .... "
In the mid-70s, he began working on new concepts of piano playing that combined advanced classical piano technique with the transcendent philosophies of the martial arts, Tai Chi and Kung Fu. Over the years, his devotion to perfection has taken the piano into completely new dimensions, with capacities that allow him to create sound effects on the piano that have never been heard before. He is correctly called “The Prophet Of The Piano”! The Ambient character of his Continuous Music has attracted a steadily growing audience, who enthusiastically find this new multi-dimensional sound experience to be a fresh and wonderful face for piano music. Between 1980 and 1990, he released six albums, two of which are double LPs, and “The Song Of Galadriel” was listed as “one of the 10 most important albums of our time” by the New York Stereo Review Magazine.