Welcome to audition season 2014!
Have you an audition or two coming up? ...for music schools and/or large ensemble placement? Want to play your best?
It's audition season! ...and you want to share all your hard and thoughtful work in your 5 minute performance. You want to play your best version of everything right out of the gate, and for your whole 5 minutes. You want to show them what you can do, and how beautiful you can make this music sound! Playing my best in performance is not just about how strong my technical abilities and musical knowledge are.
Musical Knowledge - WHAT we perform
Technical Abilities - HOW we perform
So many people tirelessly train so they can have bulletproof technique (how) and endlessly deep musical knowledge about their composers and music theory (what). These are important factors and without them, the performance is weak or worse. You can't get into your dream school or ensemble without deep musical knowledge and well-habited technical abilities! But in addition to knowing what and how we perform, there is another deal-making-or-breaking factor to our training.
Performance Approach - WHY we perform
We can agree through logic that every audition is an opportunity, right? It’s just really hard to think that you’re walking into an opportunity as you’re walking into it. We can agree through logic that worrying about who’s listening to us in the performance can do more harm than good when we think this DURING the performance, right? It’s just really hard to choose better thoughts at the time…
…unless we’ve practiced doing so!
When I added what I call performance training to my work, my performances got exponentially more consistent…in a good way! Everyone always performs consistently, it’s just that most people perform consistently worse than their best. Learning how to be a good performer as well as technician and musician will explode your performance experiences and your work around each event as well.
You can learn how to train optimally for your audition, walk in there feeling ready, and actually be ready! Through experiencing daily performances in your training, you can learn how to execute a performance that sounds like what you imagine!
Try this today - simulate your audition, and use an inspirational sheet (from my blog "Dear Students"). Read it before you walk into the room, once you get to your chair, and in-between each excerpt or piece. Reading the sheet helps in mannnnnny ways. If you dive into using it, if can help you slow down, it can also clear your self-destructive assessments, and it can help you get into your next piece.
You can authentically think, “My audition? Oh yeah….bring it on!”
Jeff Nelsen
Author