Great performances are about so much more than any individual self.  An artist is really a messenger for humanity. You don’t cry about the death of your own loved one; you cry about how every person must experience loss in this way, and yet find a way to go on. The timeless portrait of life, blackened daily by constant wrongdoing and inexplicable pain, must be cleaned and restored with our belief in the possibility of beauty, goodness, memory, and redemption, communicated through the art music which is one of the highest forms of spiritual expression known to humankind. Sometimes this transformation happens involuntarily, when the music catches us and takes us into another space; but we can also foster our own spiritual growth in order to become artist-poets who speak ideas deeper than words through our instruments. When we find this connection to the infinite, we escape our own boundaries, and our playing nears greatness. It is a humbling experience. If we are lucky, it is why we were born.