Last week I joined a forum at entre88teclas.es (@entre88teclas), a web about the piano repertoire, performers, composers … Highly recommended (spanish). I’m not regular at the forums, really. But this time, to hang out, I began to read. The topic of discussion was stage fright. “De-safinada” (nickname) asked advice on how to overcome that little-big problem that most of us have ever lived.
The following text is the first of responses. Just great. I don’t read anymore. Nothing more to add. IMO, stores should deliver a written copy of this response with every instrument they sell.
” Tilingo (nickname)
Yes. I have a couple of suggestions. The first and foremost is: get off the stage. Don’t step on the stage again. I’m not saying that you don’t play music in front of people never again, or you don’t play music in public. Forget the stage.
This situation is extremely cruel and imperfect. Music is not that. The situation in which an expert (or yourself) plays music for a group of people who receive it passively and think about him and his performance. This is not the only way. Not even the most natural or the oldest way. You playing piano and your family singing or playing another instrument as a game; maybe, playing piano on four or six hands. As a game. Take it out of the pedestal where it is. Get it out from the stage and take it to any time of day. Whenever you can make music with your friends. No need to play great works of great authors and do great performances with large instruments. Incorporates music to your daily life, to people around you. You’re with your boyfriend, washing dishes: improvise on songs that both know. You’re with your friends in a pub, improvise over the rhythm of a hype song.
The problem is not that you have stage fright (it can be too). The problem is that the interpretation of music becomes so large for us, so sacred and so important… It scares everyone. We must to recover the ability to play and use the music for our games, or resign ourselves to view the interpretation of any song like a funeral where we waited to be buried. Get off the stage. Stages are for Lang Lang; people who earn millions by being applauded. Get off and make music with your public and not against them. You must convert your public in a part of your job as a musician. Don’t let them like passive people who criticize what you do.”
This is a “homemade” translation, with some changes. Not literal. You can read the original here