“Your central tasks are finding inner peace and strength, on the one hand, and being very well-prepared for your performances, on the other.” -Eric Maisel, author & psychologist The Musician’s Way, p. 146 In The Musician’s Way, I show that stage fright arises due...
“If your programming ideas aren’t working, don’t blame your audiences.” The Musician’s Way, p. 212 For aspiring musicians, career sustainability depends on audience growth. Problem is, a standard conservatory education doesn’t equip graduates with...
“Give yourself over to the emotion of the music while you also lead the music, directing your execution and the emotional flow.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 187 Aspiring musicians work hard to develop technical and interpretive skills. After all, those are the most...
“Among adults who participated – as creators or performers – in performing arts activities, the majority (62 percent) did so to spend time with family and friends.” –National Endowment for the Arts “U.S. Patterns of Arts Participation,” p. 3...
“The spontaneity and collective energy catch fire to a degree that some performances leave indelible memories.”–The Musician’s Way, p. 154 During much of the twentieth century, before the advent of high-tech home entertainment, large numbers of people attended...
“I took lessons as a kid, but it was mostly just practicing scales, and it seemed more like homework… I gave piano lessons three attempts – the first time when I was a kid… Then, when I was sixteen… but it was still the same scales…...
“All musicians can sift through their performance issues and come out the better for it – if they choose to do the work.” The Musician’s Way, p. 146 For music students to excel as performers, they need abundant opportunities to rehearse performance skills. And...
“When I sit in Paris in a café, surrounded by people, I don’t sit casually – I go over a certain sonata in my head and discover new things all the time.” —Arthur Rubinstein, pianist The Musician’s Way, p. 34 Like Arthur Rubinstein, countless expert musicians use...
“It’s not about playing well by being comfortable and wiping out nervous energy. It’s about finding the right channel for all that energy” -Don Greene, sports psychologist The Musician’s Way, p. 184 We’ve all felt that adrenaline-fueled...
