Today’s “Daily Good” email from Good Magazine is very much related to things I like to write about here and it felt like one worth reposting. A 15 year old Russian boy, Alexey Romanov, was born with no fingers and only one leg due to illness. Even though he is without the typical relationship to a piano, he plays it beautifully and with his own finesse. As addressed in the Good Magazine article, “He recently played a concert with the respected La Primavera chamber orchestra, performing the song “River Flows in You” by South Korean pianist, Yiruma. His performance was so beautiful that the conductor couldn’t believe what he was seeing and had to sit down.”

Music seems to find a way whatever the odds are. Music drives us to conjure it, to enable it a life so that we may share the emotional setting it creates. Just yesterday I came across an academic paper entitled, “Unraveling the Mystery of Music: Music as an Evolved Group Process.” The authors theorize that, “music evolved as a form of social communication, a tool to pass information about the group’s shared mental state to a number of individuals at once.” While a little dry, it strongly advocates that music plays a pivotal role in the creation of human social bonds. We all know this intuitively, though maybe less consciously because there are more performances and shared music experiences than ever before.

Alexey’s performance is another reminder that music holds us together, keeps us close and helps us to find each other. It is moments like seeing this young man have a meaningful and powerful relationship with music that allow us to experience it newly as we are so moved by someone’s ability to defy odds and show us a new way to make music. It is always there ready to come alive, it is simply up to us to introduce our music to the world. May we all have our moments to show and share music and help it to find a way as each one of us carries a meaningful melody that all together creates this endless spectrum of humanity.

Original Good Magazine Article:
https://www.good.is/articles/alexey-has-no-limitations?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

“Twilight” performed by Alexey Romanov