The Ukrainian wizard-pianist Lubomyr Melnyk is back for two concerts in The New Space, New College, on the 23rd and 24th this February (8pm), once again as a guest of the Balliol College Musical Society. During his electric Oxford debut last November, Lubomyr, with his unique ‘continuous music’, filled three concert halls in three colleges to thunderous applause and our first-ever sight of academics in tears.

This time around, Lubomyr will be accompanied by the professional filmmaker Rupert Clague who is working on a documentary about him, executively produced by Werner Herzog, and we are excited to announce a collaboration with the creative arts research team Creative Empirical, inviting all audience members to participate in a pilot study as a basis for further research on the remarkable effects of Lubomyr’s music and technique on himself and receptive audience members.

This “operatic classical music” is rooted in Western classical harmony and is fundamentally an ode to Beethoven, but is heavily inspired by Eastern philosophies and traditions, for example by Indian classical sitar. Producing an extremely immersive, multitextural yet delicate sound from a single, supremely resonant instrument, continuous music is a new voice for piano music unlike any sound of an ordinary concert, in a way that many find deeply moving.