Montreal-based composer Erik Lankin takes neoclassical music to profound emotional heights with “The Art of Flying,” the final single from his debut The Icarus Album. This stirring, instrumental track serves as a cathartic release in a narrative built on personal loss, myth, and transformation. Drawing from the story of Daedalus and Icarus, Lankin reimagines the myth to confront and process the grief of losing his father to suicide, a brave, introspective journey rendered in strings, reversed piano, and electroacoustic textures.
Musically, “The Art of Flying” is both delicate and soaring. It's a reversed piano bed, layered with cinematic string arrangements, evoking a sense of time folding in on itself, an echo of the composer’s desire to undo the irreversible. Yet rather than dwell in sorrow, the composition rises in defiance of gravity, mirroring Icarus’ rediscovery of flight not as escape, but as healing.
The accompanying video, with vibrant paints and avian imagery, beautifully underscores the theme of transformation.
As the final piece on The Icarus Album, “The Art of Flying” delivers not just a sonic experience but a meditative release. Lankin proves himself a visionary voice in modern classical music, bold, vulnerable, and soaring toward new emotional landscapes.