Fallen Trees

Fallen Trees is the new album by singular talent and literal force of nature Lubomyr Melnyk - known as 'the prophet of the piano' due to his lifelong devotion to his instrument. Cascades of notes, canyons and rivers of sound: there's something about his music that channels the natural world at it's most awe-inspiring. In Fallen Trees the connection with the environment continues, taking it's cue from a long rail journey Melnyk made through Europe. Glancing out of the window as the train passed through a dark forest, he was struck by the sight of trees that had recently been felled. "They were glorious," he says. "Even though they'd been killed, they weren't dead. There was something sorrowful there, but also hopeful." That sense of sadness touched by optimism infuses the album, too: rarely has Melnyk made music so shot through with melancholy and regret, but which sounds so rapt, even radiant.