Why

pray.

piano?

Leonard Bernstein once said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” To use more theological language, we could perhaps say, “This will be our reply to sin or brokenness or struggle or meaninglessness: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Or, perhaps most simplistically of all: “This will be our reply to the human condition: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more prayerfully than ever before.”

I desperately believe that within the depths of the human heart is a sincere search for God, a search for Love and a search to be loved. This may take as many forms as there are hearts in this world, and it may even require the same number of paths. But each and every person is seeking a meaning to their life that is somehow both infinitely transcendent and infinitely immanent. Put another way, one could say that we all crave Truth, Goodness, and perhaps most of all, we all crave Beauty. And this craving can only be satisfied in the One-who-is-Reality-itself: the one we call God.

HOW TO PRAY PIANO is a humble attempt to seek Beauty, or perhaps to allow Beauty to seek us. Each note — each sound! — is intentionally crafted in such a way as to allow for this Beauty to reveal itself. In other words, all of it is simply a vehicle for prayer. Indeed, music extends far beyond the notes on the page in an attempt to grasp at the infinite and experience it in the fragility and finitude of the here-and-now. In essence, these hymns and meditations and arrangements are vessels for that grasping, that seeking, that searching for God. As you play (as you listen!), remember this search. Play piano, yes, but from the depths of your heart, pray it, too. And perhaps allow God, the One-who-is-Beauty-incarnate — the One who has been seeking you since before time even began — to enter into this moment and be the One who prays piano through you.

JOHN LIVINGSTON

has loved the piano for as long as he can remember. But it was only much later that he realized that the love he had for the beauty and song and the wood and wires of the piano was really a love and yearning for God. It was God’s infinite music that had been calling him, beckoning him deeper and deeper into the mystery of Beauty itself.

John studied piano at Penn State University and has spent his time since making music with others in many contexts and settings across the country. He has served in ministry for several years and currently works as a Director of Evangelization for a local church in the St. Louis area, where he resides with his wonderfully loving wife Holly and their overly enthusiastic dog Farfel.

For booking requests or other inquiries, contact John here.

JOHN LIVINGSTON

For booking requests or other inquiries, contact John here.