Performance Anxiety? Still?

Everything goes great up until the day of the event. That's usually when a group of smiling, gregarious people with cheeks rosied from rosé turns into a threatening mob preparing to pelt me with tomato soup or whatever vegetable happens to be within reach. According to my anxious hindbrain, at least.

I've been playing since I was five. Performing and competing since I was seven. You’d think that twenty-four years of experience would earn me immunity from stage fright, or at least inoculate me against any physical symptoms. 

Far from it. My fingers shake, my heart pounds, and my vision tunnels, before each high-stakes performance. 

Most recently, I performed as a soloist at a wedding. We'd agreed that the bride would be walking down the aisle...to, Lord forbid, my playing. My fingers began to shake as soon as I'd arrived at the venue, despite the wedding rehearsal having gone well.

I'd come well-prepared, practiced, and rehearsed. So why was my body acting as though I’d never touched an instrument in my life? 

The Strad published an article quoting Carter Brey, principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, saying ‘The whole thing about being a performer is being able to master the psychological tricks that you play on yourself.’   

Like many performers, I've considered both liquid courage and beta blockers because I'm tired of having my hard work sabotaged by a last minute bout of stage-fright, but always decided against them. 

At the risk of sounding cheesy, finding the inner strength to deal with self-consciousness seems to be a more sustainable solution. Maybe we need to uproot the idea that if we "fail", we are entirely failed musicians.

I have to remind myself that we are not the sum of our performances or functions and that we are each inherently valuable human beings. That our job as musicians is to stir emotion in the audience and have them understand the composer's message. 

Ultimately, performance anxiety can be tackled through exposure. I personally decided to perform in the most unlikely of public of spaces in order to make my brain behave. That is how I wound up playing for a group of lovely senior citizens having a ladies' brunch in a field, with lawn chairs, somewhere in Leduc. 

In the end, all's well that ends well and the wedding performance was a success. Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring and Canon in D rang out in the hall as everyone admired the breathtaking bride. 

It was a moment of unity, beauty, happiness, and love that I am honoured to have been a part of.