Four Auburn musicians are breaking chains with Bach.
"If you're an engineer, you have Engineers Without Borders and doctors have Doctors Without Borders," said Christina Fallows, sophomore in piano performance.
"You can't really go to Africa and play piano for kids; that's not what they need. This is the best way to use our talent to make a difference."
The four performers will include Fallows, Christina Kettering, sophomore in piano performance, Thomas Harbin, senior in piano performance, and Brittany Grant, senior in accountancy.
Kettering decided to plan a benefit concert as a way to channel her musical talent toward a greater cause.
"There are organizations for so many other majors and disciplines that use people's talents for so many majors and disciplines, and so I was trying to figure out what in the world music could be good for," Kettering said.
"I love music, but I want to do something more than entertainment and something more than art even. I think art should have a social purpose, not just aesthetics."
The concert will be held Tuesday from 7-9 p.m. at Auburn United Methodist Church.
"We talk about music being the universal language," Kettering said. "I wanted to do something that had universal impact."
All proceeds from the concert will go to help victims of slavery through the International Justice Mission, a human rights organization that works to free victims of slavery and sexual exploitation.
IJM has over 100 chapters on college campuses nationwide.
"I want everyone to realize that we all have different gifts and abilities that we can use to put toward things like social justice," Harbin said.
"Our IJM chapter is doing a really great job at promoting the cause of IJM, and this is just a way that we can link what we do professionally and academically to benefitting the greater global cause."
Fallows said modern-day slavery is an issue that's closer to home than many people realize.
"If you don't know already about it, there's a huge underground sex slavery organization going on in Atlanta, which is only two hours away from us," Fallows said. "You don't have to go to a different continent to find slavery--in the U.S. it's right next door.
"I think it's easy for people to get caught up in their own life and not realize how much people are going through around them."
IJM offered the performers a way to support a cause they are all passionate about, Harbin said.
"It has the appeal of being a Christian organization, but also an organization working toward social justice in general, which can appeal to people that are not of a religious persuasion but still care about the world," he said.
Harbin said he hopes the concert serves as encouragement to students to use their own talents to make a difference globally.
"One of our main goals in creating this concert event is not only to raise money for IJM with this particular event, because the harsh reality is that we may not raise that much money," Harbin said, "but to inspire the community to look at their own field of study and look at how they can use what they do to create similar events that support the global cause."
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