by Gerald Klickstein | Mar 14, 2023 | music performance, performance anxiety, Stage fright, The Musician's Way
“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...
by Gerald Klickstein | Oct 26, 2022 | creative process, music performance, performance anxiety, The Musician's Way
“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...
by Gerald Klickstein | Mar 30, 2022 | creative process, music careers, music education, The Musician's Way
“Ultimately, your musical progress will depend more on your skillfulness with the creative process than on any talent.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 313 When I teach introductory workshops on The Musician’s Way, I organize concepts using frameworks that musicians can...
by Gerald Klickstein | Feb 3, 2022 | music education, music performance, music practice, The Musician's Way
“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…...
by Gerald Klickstein | Feb 18, 2019 | Entrepreneurship, music careers, music education, Music Higher Education, The Musician's Way
“I recognized a gap between what we musicians typically learn during our schooling and what we actually need to know.” -Gerald Klickstein In September 2018, Yamaha Music Media published a Japanese translation of The Musician’s Way, which rocketed to the top of its...
by Gerald Klickstein | Jun 17, 2018 | music performance, music practice, performance anxiety
“It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.” -Ornette Coleman, saxophonist & composer The Musician’s Way, p. 190 In the discovery phase of practice, all of us make errors as we try out interpretive and technical...
by Gerald Klickstein | Apr 17, 2018 | music careers, music performance
“When you don’t transmit irritation from mechanical breakdowns, an audience finds them interesting and even amusing.” –The Musician’s Way, p. 195 Thorough preparation underpins every successful performance. But even when we’re fully geared up...
by Gerald Klickstein | Sep 6, 2017 | music performance, stage presence, The Musician's Way
“When I finally saw how I looked, I realized that I was distracting the audience from the music.” -Alfred Brendel, pianist The Musician’s Way, p. 171 Imagine standing backstage prior to your entrance at the start of a concert: as the house lights dim, the...
by Gerald Klickstein | Jul 12, 2017 | music performance, performance anxiety, The Musician's Way
“Public performance is a potent truth serum.” -William Westney, pianist The Musician’s Way , p. 201 In my post, “The 3 Roots of Performance Anxiety,” I explain how stage nerves arise due to personal, task-related and situational factors. This article...
