Music as a Healing Balm: A Conversation with Andrew Janss

How can music help connect us to our humanity? How can music act as a salve, a balm when a person is literally or figuratively confined in a correctional facility, a refugee camp or an ICU hospital bed?

Soka Performing Arts Center General Manager Renee Bodie speaks with Andrew Janss, founding cellist for the acclaimed Escher Quartet, current cellist for Break of Reality about Project: Music Heals Us, the non-profit organization he co-founded and serves as Executive Director. The organization’s mission is to provide inspiration, education and healing through live music performances and interactive programming to marginalized communities across the United States, with a focus on the disabled, rehabilitating, incarcerated, and homeless.

The discussion will also include the organization’s Vital Sounds Initiative, a program providing live, one-on-one, digital bedside concerts to isolated COVID-19 hospital patients across the country. Not only does the music have a profound impact on the patients, but also on the musicians performing the concerts.

A question and answer session will follow the conversation.