Tonight I went to dinner at my favorite inn (The Harraseeket Inn in Freeport) with my favorite innkeeper. He said that they were having a concert in one of the function rooms. “A piano player who sings,” he told me. After dinner, we decided to walk down the hall and listen. I was instantly mesmerized.

Turns out that the piano player was none other than Eli Mattson, a finalist in this year’s America’s Got Talent. Though I love the show, I always forget to watch, so his name wasn’t familiar to me. I walked in and sat down without a single preconceived notion about what I would hear. He had me at the first number. As soon as Eli launched into Walking in Memphis (one of my all time favorite tunes—check out his audition using this song) I became a huge fan.

In addition to doing some wonderful cover songs, like Elton John’s Your Song and I Need You by Tim McGraw, Eli also did some of his own songs. And I spent the rest of the evening sitting there pinching myself for my luck at walking into a concert of world-class caliber—with only about 100 people present! Mattson, who is only 26, has a fabulous, deep, gravelly voice. And his piano playing rivals Elton John’s (his hero).

I closed my eyes and just let the music wash over me for the entire evening. Have you ever noticed that you can hear more when you close your eyes? Turns out that the vision pathways in the brain tend to down-regulate the auditory pathways. This is why we automatically close our eyes when we want to listen more intently.

Live music performances uplift us in a way that listening to recordings simply cannot match. And the appreciation of the music by everyone in the room syncs our hearts and spirits, lifting us higher. Talk about the power of now!!! So tonight I’m flying higher and feeling like I’ve touched the Divine as it came through a young man called Eli Mattson!