Day One: Workshop Stage Presentation
For the third festival in succession, the workshop Stage Presentation by Bobby Rootveld was a useful happening. Three years ago I started as a soloist, last year I came with my former duo partner, and now I was there as a soloist again.
I took a ride on stage, forgot all basic principles (introducing yourself and announcing the pieces), felt something like alone again, hurried too much during playing and suddenly found my fingers glued to the fingerboard. It must be the sense of being a soloist again, so weird! Anyway, it was a good thing to be aware of, it provides a kind of sense of purpose, of things to work on.
The lesson from the workshop is: "everything you are doing on stage belongs to your performance." It appeared that studying the music for performance is not the only thing. Subjects of rehearsal also are the way you enter the stage, your first contact with the audience, the way you sit down, tuning, announcing the music, receiving the applause and finally leaving the stage.
Despite my flash in the pan of the first ride, I took the opportunity for discussion of one of the annoying phenomena of musicianship: performance stress. Even the most experienced musician suffers from them, I noticed with some of the participants. I must say that I felt relieved that I was not the only one.
How to deal or not to deal with it, that’s the question. Apparently lots of musicians use rituals for that, so it seems. Some have a specific way of hitting the stage, others eat a number of bananas just before the recital in order to slow down their metabolism, which apparently has a de-stressing effect. I also heard about moments of meditation before playing, and the application of alcohol or medication like so called "beta-blocking" drugs to decrease the inhibitions.
It was a good thing to talk about it. My second ride went way better.
Bobby came up with a last hint, a book by Denis Azabagic about performance stress. I guess it’s about On Competitions, Dealing with Performance Stress, a little book (about 32 pages) which is published by Mel Bay Publications. I think I am going to order and read it!