Make Stage Fright and Audition Anxiety Work for You
How to train your brain and perform
Imagine the worst audition you could ever experience. Picture a stifling, noisy, overcrowded waiting-room with a malfunctioning air conditioner, with you and dozens of other perspiring musicians waiting interminably before being called out to the stage—where matters grow even worse. You can't find your violin. The sheet music is gone. The music stand keeps falling over. And once you finally start playing, the stage lights suddenly go out, plunging you into blackness at the precise moment that somebody drops a huge hunk of lumber onto the stage—right behind you—with a deafening crash.
Bad, huh? Enough to drive a person screaming out the door, or, at the very least, to cause a good, solid player to melt down mid-audition. That level of stress is simply too much of a bad thing. Right? Actually, wrong, according to Dr. Don Greene, who believes that stress, when properly prepared for, can actually be good for a musician.
This article, "Make Stage Fright and Audition Anxiety Work for You," is part of the Strings Archive, which you can access with a paid site subscription.
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