Open Space Presents Lubomyr Melnyk: Continuous Music

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Saturday, February 27th, 2010
8:00 PM

Lubomyr Melnyk (Stockholm/Winnipeg)
Victoria — Lubomyr Melnyk will perform a piano concert at Alix Goolden Hall on Saturday February 27 at 8 p.m., demonstrating his truly brilliant and original approach to the piano. The performance will include his original solo works as well as the World Premiere of Windmills, for multiple taped and live pianos. This is a performance you definitely don’t want to miss! While in Victoria, Lubomyr will also offer a Master class and discussion to students at the University of Victoria on Thursday, January 25th, 1:00 — 2:30 p.m..

Lubomyr Melnyk is truly a great innovator and explorer of the piano and has been regarded as the fastest pianist in the world, setting two world records for his playing. His original “continuous music” approach to piano playing and composition —described in his book Open Time: The Art of Continuous Music (Toronto, 1981)— is based on the principle of a “continuous” and unbroken line of sound from the piano, created by generating a constant flow of rapid notes, usually with the pedal sustained. The notes can be either in the form of patterns or as broken chords that are spread over the keyboard, creating a unique sound where overtones blend or clash according to the changes in harmony. To accomplish this requires a special technique, one that has taken Lubomyr many years to master.

Lubomyr Melnyk will be performing as part of the Open Space Piano Series Between the Notes. Other performers include Tzenka Dianova on Thursday February 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Alix Goolden Hall and Gust Burns, performing two unique concerts Monday, March 1, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, March 6, 8 p.m at Open Space as part of his Piano De/Re-Constructed residency.

A pass for all four concerts can be purchased for $35 and for members, $30.

“One of the truly great experiences of life, where the soul seemed to transcend into an experience close to what the mystics described . . . it is beautiful music, magnificently played. . . probably the most unique piano music of the 20th century. . .demanding a new and stupendous mental/physical technique! ”

Biography
Lubomyr Melnyk (pianist, composer, improviser)
Lubomyr Melnyk, BA (Manitoba), MA philosophy (Queen’s) is one of the most innovative and fascinating pianists/composers of this century. Lubomyr Melnyk’s parents fled the Communist expansion and settled in Winnipeg in the early 1950s. During the 1970s, he lived for two years in Paris, where he accompanied contemporary dance under Carolyn Carlson at the Paris Opera.

During this period and with the assistance from the Canada Council, he developed a new “language” for the piano called Continuous Music and, with it, a physical and mental technique that is unprecedented in the history of the piano. The technique’s effect is perhaps most audible in his compositions for two pianos. It is noteworthy that some critics and professional pianists dismiss his work as “merely fast arpeggios” (evidently missing the essential features of the overtones and resonance in his work) while others praise his originality and depth. The approach has much in common with minimalism, although he strongly refutes that term, preferring to call his music “MAXIMALism,” since the player has to generate so many notes to create what he calls “Fourth Dimensions of Sound.”

Using his remarkable technique, Lubomyr Melnyk has set two world records for pianistic achievements: the fastest pianist in the world — sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously; and the most number of notes in one hour — in exactly 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a remarkable total of 93,650 individual notes.

From the mid-1970s on, Lubomyr Melnyk divided his time between Sweden and Canada and toured in Europe and North America performing his own music. He gave a concert of his works at the Ukrainian Institute in New York in 1989. His Lund-St. Petri Symphony, a work for solo pianist and tape recorder, was premiered at the cathedral in Lund, Switzerland, and performed elsewhere in that country and in Norway and France. The work, in three sections, calls for a cumulative effect using tape equipment. The soloist records the first section with audience present, then plays it back while recording simultaneously his performance of the second section, and repeats the process by recording the third section over the mixed recordings of the first and second. Melnyk wrote NIHIL for the Kingston Youth Orchestra.

Melnyk has recorded extensively for the CBC in Canada, as well as various European stations. He has performed and given lecture-recitals across Canada and in Europe. From 1979 —1987, Bandura Records released several LP albums of Melnyk’ s works, two of which were among the list of “modern recordings you shouldn’t be without ” by The Village Voice.

TICKETS/ADMISSION: $12/$15 (concert) or $30/$35 (Piano Series Pass)
www.lubomyr.com/
Listen: www.lubomyr.com/listen.html
Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm8LJSfIJJs&feature=related