In times of world-scale economic crises, systemic social injustices, wide-ranging political pandemonium, and profound technological transformations, artists and musicians may find themselves questioning the significance of their work and activity. The extraordinary development of artificial intelligence has rekindled the controversial debate over the hierarchy of essentiality among jobs, and, more fundamentally, over the purpose and value of human activity itself.

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As I consider my role as a performer, the words of John Keating, the main character of the movie Dead Poets Society, resonate within: his distinction between the pursuits necessary to sustain life and those, such as poetry, beauty, and love, that make life worth living.

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I have little doubt that artificial intelligence will eventually surpass human musicians in technical mastery and perhaps even creative expression. Machines may become capable of reproducing not only flawless performances but also the spontaneity, vulnerability, and imperfections that characterize human interpretation. Yet even if a machine's performance became indistinguishable from that of a human being, I believe that merely knowing its artificial origin would fundamentally alter our experience of it. Unlike surgery, for instance, where the outcome matters more than whether the surgeon is human, music derives its deepest significance from the encounter between human beings. What might appear to be art's greatest weakness, its apparent irrelevance to our material survival, may therefore become its greatest strength. As technology increasingly assumes the responsibilities necessary to sustain our existence, artistic creation may become ever more central to what makes that existence meaningful.

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Music’s sublime soul-stirring power is the intrinsic raison d’être that inspires my art. Far it be from me to discover my true self, I can completely abandon and forget myself while playing, even though for just a fleeting instant. Beyond all the relevant cultural, intellectual, and pedagogical considerations, my final intent, the driving force behind my artistic struggles, is to gift audiences through my music-making with a moment of vicarious forgetfulness, a flash of timeless feeling.

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My work as a piano performer, teacher, and scholar focuses on furthering and disseminating the great piano classics and, even more importantly, on promoting marginalized and lesser-known composers from historically sidelined cultures. The greater my potential outreach, the more substantial my humble contribution to general music scholarship, to the popularization and expansion of the repertoire, and to people’s journey towards self-abandonment.

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Our era is the cradle of profound, fast-paced societal and ideological transformations. Classical music, being a repository of enduring human values, naturally resists being reduced to mere technological achievement or functional utility. As I advance through my career, I strive to create new musical models and paradigms, adequate to the needs of our times, while preserving the core values of our artistic heritage. Ultimately, my mission is to reaffirm music as an inescapably human endeavor, one whose significance may only increase in a world where machines progressively relieve us of the necessities of survival, leaving us greater freedom to pursue what makes life worth living.