When Opportunity Knocks
When opportunity knocks, be ready. My mentor, Margaret Baxtresser emphasized this point often. She told us a story of having received a phone call from an orchestra. The pianist was not able to fulfill their commitment to play the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto. They asked if she knew the piece and could she perform it in six weeks. She had never played the piece, but she was confident in her abilities and thus said yes. The performance received rave reviews. But how did she develop the confidence and follow through with success?
Talent and practice, practice practice. And have the right teacher who can guide you along. It is not enough to have raw talent. Even the most talented fall by the wayside if they do not develop discipline. Mental training can be developed to get to the point of bullet-proof confidence. One must learn how to stay focused on the task at hand. They need to be able to know what to listen for so that they can make decisions that will further develop their skills outside of the lesson. Mrs. Baxtresser would talk about achieving small successes and then to build on them. This brings about confidence which fuels motivation that leads to momentum even in the most difficult times. Learning how to persist despite the distractions and personal dramas and is such a big part of the training. One may find themselves in the middle of a great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and have to play with the flu, as happened to me once in a solo concert in Prague. One has to be able to pull out everything from the deep recesses of their disciplined training to get through the event. We want to give up when things get tough, but that is the time to dig in and persist.
In addition to practice, we want to create opportunities to play our music in different formal and informal environments in order to develop experiences performing. Each experience is different. Playing for friends and family can be even more daunting than playing for an audience of strangers. Mrs. Baxtresser would talk about thinking of performing as part of a continuum instead of having only one opportunity to get everything perfect. The pressure can be too much. Performing is a moment to moment experience that can become magic with the right preparation and freedom that allows one to be guided from beginning to end instead of worrying about mistakes. So what if we miss a note. Audiences are very forgiving. It makes the artist that much more human and adds to that shared experience between the artist and the audience. Having the confidence from multiple performances gives us that sense of freedom and can bring us great joy as performers.
Enjoy the journey. Music touches us all, and whether we become performers or not, the experience of being touched by our own experience playing or sharing with others, those little moments are what make all the persistent practice worth it. be ready. Take the opportunity.
