Dear Friends,
It's been several weeks since my last email. It wasn't my intention to skip a few weeks, but you know how it goes! 🙄Things got busy and the newsletter was one of the things that took a back seat.
A few quick things:
- 🎹 Performance: If you're in the Indianapolis area, I'm playing a recital on Tuesday, October 28th at 7:30 p.m. Eastern at Butler University. Click here for more info.
- 🎵 Scale Course: I'm planning to make a course on scale technique!
This course will be for people who already know their scales (or knew them at one time) and want to go back and revisit/solidify their scales, as well as build on those fundamentals and improve scale technique and musicality.
If you are interested in this topic, please click here and I will let you know when more information is available!
- 🎓 Study With Me: It’s recruiting season at Butler University! We have space for up to three undergraduates and two masters level pianists for next year. We offer music scholarships in addition to academic scholarships. Additionally, we have 1-2 graduate assistantships available at the master's level.
Please contact me if you are interested or if you have students who would be a good fit to study with me. Butler University is a great place to be a music major, and one thing that sets us apart is our extensive list of double majors with music and another subject.
As I mentioned, lately, I've been in performance mode. I recently played a couple of recitals in Wisconsin, and I have some other performances in the coming weeks.
Because I have been practicing a lot and have performing on my mind, today I want to share three truths I have discovered about performing, based on the hundreds of concerts I have played as well as the dozens of student recitals I have supervised so far over the course of my career.
Truth Number 1:
Nothing in practice substitutes for a performance. You can practice and practice all you’d like, but when you get to the actual performance, it will feel different than the practice room.
As you prepare, there are things you can do to simulate a performance, including playthroughs for other people, visualizing the performance before it happens, and playing your music with an elevated heartrate to simulate the physical sensations associated with being nervous.
Once, in a masterclass, I heard the great György Sebők say: “Practicing is practicing practicing, performing is practicing performing.”
I love the cryptic, almost Yoda-like wisdom of this sentence! What it really means is: the main way to get comfortable performing is to perform more. When you practice, you’re only getting better at practicing.
Truth Number 2:
Preparation works in inverse proportion to nerves. I have found that the more prepared I am, the less nervous I get in performance. This might seem like an obvious truth, but it’s super easy to underestimate how much preparation is actually needed to feel confident and secure.
In this recent interview with Evgeny Kissen, shared with me by one of my students, Kissen talks about a time when he was informed that 1.6 billion people would be watching his upcoming performance at the Grammy awards. (1.6 billion people! 🤯 Can you imagine?) When he heard this, he started to practice intensively. In the interview he says: “....When the time came, I walked on stage—and because I had played it so many times, I simply repeated it one more time. Just like I had done in the dressing room. Calmly. Without nerves. That’s when I truly understood that the only way to overcome stage fright is through intense preparation and practice."
Truth Number 3:
The more you perform, the easier it gets. One adage that I heard once (unfortunately I can't remember where) that has stuck with me over the years is: “It’s much harder to play one concert a year than it is to play twenty concerts a year.” I have found this to be absolutely true.
I think this is because performing more increases your self-trust. In his book Playing Your Best When It Counts, Dr. Bill Moore writes: “Performers in a variety of domains report that during their best performances, they suspend all judgments about outcome; free themselves of expectations, fears, doubts, and other cognitive activity; and trust what they have trained.”
In my experience, this is much more likely to happen if you are in the habit of performing regularly enough that you can have multiple performance experiences to reflect on and learn from. If you are only playing in public occasionally, such as once a year, it will feel like the stakes are very high, but if a given performance is one of multiple concerts you are playing that year, the stakes will not seem as dire, because you will get another chance relatively soon afterwards.
While performing is always a special occasion and should always be taken seriously, it does become easier if you do it more.
You might be in the process of preparing for a performance. If so, I hope these three “truths” speak to you and help you as you get ready. You might be afraid to perform. If this is you, I hope you consider the possibility of working on overcoming your fear by scheduling not just one, but several (perhaps two or three!) performances for yourself, even if they are low-key and just for one or two other people.
Wishing you an excellent practice week ahead!
Kate