Lubomyr Melnyk – Rivers and Streams

Lubomyr focuses deeply on this connection to water, to the point where the music itself begins to embody it's liquid form. Produced by Robert Raths and Jamie Perera, the album flows seamlessly from the live recordings of 'The Pool of Memories', captured in a church, to pieces entirely born in the studio, such as 'Sunshimmers' and 'Ripples in a Water Scene', which feature Perera on acoustic and electric guitar.

Amorphous, ever-changing, Lubomyr as performer becomes subsumed into the natural ebb and flow of the keys as the album drifts between nascent upstream trickles and deeply reflective passages through winding river valleys. The album reaches it's climax in 'The Amazon', a 20-minute piece dedicated to the world's largest river. Raths invited Korean flautist Hyelim Kim to guest on the first part, before Lubomyr closes the album with cascades of arpeggio figures, stretching across the breadth of the keyboard with rapid virtuosity. Following on from 2013's 'Corollaries' album and last year's 'Evertina' EP, Lubomyr's latest offering compounds upon his existing fluid signature style, and breathes an organic vitality, both nuanced and thoughtful.