For Berklee educated pianist and composer Eric Genuis, music is about more than just entertainment. It is a language used to “uplift the soul.”
This is what Genius, also a graduate of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, aimed to communicate in playing for the student body Thursday morning.
“The hope is to bring joy,” Genuis said. “It’s to elevate their humanity. It’s to make them feel good. It’s to recognize that humanity is good. When you inspire another person, what you’re really saying is humanity is good. ‘Life is worthwhile.’”
In reflecting this goodness, Genuis seeks to highlight that each person is made in the image of God.
“The whole goal in life is to recognize the reality that there is a profound dignity of every person,” Genuis said.
Though he may not reach every person he plays for, Genuis said he won’t give up, continuing to play “with aggression.”
“With aggression, I sort of define it with vision, with determination, with conviction and with courage and with being willing to be wrong and to fall and to fail,” he said.
Genuis who describes his music as “classical in form, but with a modern feel,” believes it can communicate his message in a unique way, reaching the soul unlike any other form of communication.
“It penetrates all those sorts of ideas that we have of how we should behave; that’s the power of music,” Genuis said.
For more information about Genuis, click here.
