Animisha I wonder, do you think that not preparing and building up a longer low-grade nervousness helped you in any way? Like, maybe you slept better the night before?
I actually got word late in the day on Monday and the concert was on Tuesday. And I had played for different sets of guests at my on the two Sundays before the concert (gatherings I set up as soon as I was initially invited to play), so in that regard, I had been preparing musically. I had just switched off my brain, expecting that I wouldn’t play. And then when I received that email, my heart started to pound and didn’t stop for what felt like an hour! 😅
But what I think helped the most… well one of the things, was exercise. I think that getting my heart rate up (mostly on an exercise bike) daily, and especially on the day of the concert, made a difference. I’ve written about this before somewhere here, and @twocats and I have talked about it, but because perfomance anxiety involved the “fight or flight” response, which is basically just a big rush of adrenaline (a hormone), the idea is that if you do some cardio on the day of the perfomance, you can deplete some of your adrenaline and take the edge off of the response. The other thing is that regular exercise is supposed to help with mental calm as well.
I’ve been doing regular PT and exercise bike (because of my ongoing problems with my foot) and so I made it a point to do that on Sunday and Monday, which helped with sleep. Then on Tuesday (the day of the concert) I made extra sure to have a hard session in the morning before work. Then I left work early and had a hard ride (for me) on the exercise bike around 5pm. The concert was at 7pm.
So first of all I think that helped a lot. But it’s not the only thing. Here is my “analysis” of what contributed this time 😃
- The two pieces I played are below my level, or at the bottom rather than the top in terms of difficulty for me.
- The physical exercise stuff I did
- Playing for guests at home twice in the two weeks beforehand.
- The concert was at a retirement center and the audience was super supportive and welcoming
- I got to the venue early and had 15 minutes with the piano by myself to get acclimated to the instrument and the room
- The instrument was nice and didn’t have any weird problems (unlike the one recital I played in where the piano was on a piano dolly and it made the piano shake the whole time!)
- Before the concert, I talked to some of the guests in the hall outside and that helped me connect with them
- I intro’ed my pieces and got to talk to the audience at the beginning as well.
I think that’s it. That’s a lot of elements all working together, it’s kind of like “everything that could have gone right did go right” 🙂