Lubomyr Melnyk
Friday, September 23, 2022
7pm doors / 7:30pm show
Tickets $25 (discounted or free for members)
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Mask required for entry
Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukrainian composer and pianist who has pioneered Continuous Piano Music. Classically trained and greatly affected by the minimalist movement in the early 1970s, he has developed his own unique language for the piano, named after the principle of maintaining a continuous, unbroken stream of sound.
Inspired by the minimal phase and pattern music of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley, yet frustrated by the ecstatic detachment from reality they can encourage, Lubomyr Melnyk went about creating a mode of music, which he called Continuous Music, that was based in the innovations of the minimalist composers but had its roots more deeply planted in harmony. “KMH” (1978) is the fruition of the idea, which he began developing in 1974, and closely figures a similar sentiment that Reich expressed in his watershed “Music for 18 Musicians,” though Reich was detached socially as well as professionally from Melnyk. “KMH,” however, goes beyond the textural beauties of a piece like “Music for 18 Musicians” and succeeds in functioning as an engaging drama as well as a piece of music. The influence of dancer / choreographer and Igor Wakevitch collaborator Carolyn Carlson on Melnyk underlies this.