Made it a Month with No Caffeine

Coffeee_img451

I made it a month with no caffeine! Did anything useful come from it?

[Continue reading Made it a Month with No Caffeine]

One Month with No Caffeine

Coffeee_img(with x)

Beginning today (I wrote this on the 15th), I am taking an official month away from caffeine. No soda, no coffee, no tea, no Excedrin no Red Bull, no nadda.

[Continue reading One Month with No Caffeine]

Perform Fearlessly Part IV: The Day of the Performance

Chill_out

By this point of preparation, you can do little to fundamentally change your outlook on the nature of a performance. So your best bet is to set up conditions so that you are in peak shape to perform even if you still have lingering worries.

Get enough sleep the night before. Pavarotti said in Great Singers on Great Singing that on a typical performance day he would sleep in until noon. Rest!
Eat enough….but not too much. It’s scary being so stuffed that you cannot breathe, but it’s equally frightening to be so famished that you have no strength. This will probably deserve its own post in the future, but you must learn what is best for your body and your voice when you eat. Before a performance, try eating a light meal a few hours in advance. Then bring fruit to the performance to refuel while you are taking breaks.
Beware of Caffeine. In my most recent Weekly Gathering, I posted Coffee Breakdowns: Is There a Link Between Caffeine and Hallucinations? This quote is particularly ominous for the potentially worried performer:

Caffeine heightens the physiological effects of stress, lead author Simon Jones says. When someone feels anxiety, the body releases the

[Continue reading Perform Fearlessly Part IV: The Day of the Performance]

Weekly Gathering: July 10-17

There were lots of good articles this past week! Perhaps there was some built up energy from the July 4 festivities.

Pianist and scholar Robert Levin speaks at Curtis Commencement on May 16, 2009. If you click on nothing here, you must listen to this if you are a classical musician. It takes about 15 minutes. It’s worth it. [It's not from the time period specified in this post's title, but it's still great.]

Make Your Audition Pianist Happy by Billie Whittaker on her blog Good Company is an informative and funny article. It is specifically written for singers, so you should definitely check it out.

Sitting Quietly, Doing Something from the New York Times bog Happy Days is about the science of happiness. In particular, it is about a Buddhist monk who is demonstrably the happiest man in the world. Turns out that happiness is trainable. There’s also an embedded video that is very interesting.

I Don’t Know How they Do it by Jessica Duchen at Standpoint. This is an appreciative article about Joyce DiDonato who sang Rosina in Barber of Seville with a broken leg. It goes on to ask for pity for singers who cancel due

[Continue reading Weekly Gathering: July 10-17]