Lauded for his ability to create a symphony of sound with a single instrument, this enigmatic Ukrainian composer has spent the past 40 years developing his unique piano technique. Describing it as 'continuous music', he combines the soaring density of post-rock and the virtuosic delicacy of minimal-classical. The results are dizzying, transcendental and lush.

Lubomyr Melnyk’s music was born of hunger — not dramatic, existential hunger, but actual, physical starvation. At the time, in the 1970s, Melnyk was a young Ukrainian-Canadian musician living in Paris, a budding pianist and an admirer of Terry Riley and John McLaughlin. Today, off the back of a record deal with Erased Tapes (alongside fellow artists Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm) and more recently Sony Classical, Melnyk is finally playing shows to breathless audiences in sold-out spaces. There is no other performer quite like him.

Make a night of it with a Festival Feast meal for $55 per person at China Lane, Mercado or Steel Bar and Grill. 

Photo: Aleksandra Kawka