‘…he is not human!  His playing is from Heaven!’

‘…absolutely stunning!  I have never been so in love with the piano as now.’

‘The man is a magician...  He is hiding more hands than we can see.’

‘His fingers are not even touching the keys. How does he do it?’

 – Listeners about Lubomyr Melnyk

The Ukrainian composer and pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, also known as the Prophet of the Piano, is the developer of a new musical language, Continuous Music, and one of the greatest piano virtuosi of our time. With his unique piano technique, he paints unheard soundscapes, his lightning-fast fingers seeming to move at supersonic speed at times.

The upcoming concert in Cēsis will be an event marking the release of Lubomyr Melnyk’s latest record, ‘The Sacred Thousand’. The composer refers to his new album as a ‘film for the mind’. The record is sombre and reflective, a tribute to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who resisted the Russian troops, overwhelmingly superior in number, holding out for weeks inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. ‘Music is like a journey inside the human soul, the beautiful depth of our spiritual power. This is a historic album, one you should listen to,’ according to the composer.

The concert is a joint project with the Latvian jazz record company Jersika Records, the label that the new album ‘The Sacred Thousand’ was released under.

Lubomyr Melnyk started working on new concepts of piano technique in the mid-1970s, merging the Advanced Classical approach with the philosophies of the transcendent martial arts of Tai Chi and Kung Fu.

Over the years, his striving to attain perfection has revealed completely new dimensions of piano playing, allowing him to play at an unprecedented speed and produce previously unheard sound effects on his piano.

Melnyk’s deeply personal performances have delighted listeners all over the world; meanwhile, his technically virtuoso musical pieces have been puzzling music professionals: even the greatest pianists are practically unable to play them.

Between 1980 and 1990, Lubomyr Melnyk recorded six albums; of these, ‘The Song of Galadriel’ was rated as ‘one of the 10 most important albums of our time’  by the New York Stereo Review Magazine. Since 2002, Melnyk has recorded some 16 digital albums, including his ‘Illirion’, released under Sony Classical.

Recent years have seen Melnyk perform at various musical festivals and appear in concert all over the world: in Europe, North America, China and Japan. Melnyk is interested in technological innovations that may improve and intensify the musical experience of the listeners, and he is constantly working with sound engineers to perfect the digital recording techniques.