http://jimfordmusic.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/book-performing-in-the-zone-by-jon-gorrie/
Book: Performing in the Zone by Jon Gorrie
by jimfordmusic
This is an awesome book that really helps with performance anxiety and a host of other issues that hold me back from performing at my full potential. I wish I had this book, when I had my “big” audition for bass player in the National Symphony in Washington, DC back in the late 70s. At that time I was studying (post-college) with Steve Brewster the Principal Bassist at that time. By the way Steve was an incredible human being and musician and will be the subject of a future article. I had prepared well for this audition and had mastered the list of orchestra bass parts indicated. I also had prepared a solo piece that I could play beautifully at my lessons. Steve proclaimed that I was well prepared for the audition and wished me well at my lesson prior to the audition.
I got to the audition with my bass and music. I was escorted to the waiting rooms below the stage. I encountered a large number of bassists all working away and practicing their parts and sounding very proficient and capable of passing the audition. Some had the parts all memorized and could wiz through them at fast tempos. I was completely blown away by this and started feeling woefully inadequate. I got quite nervous and began feeling high anxiety about my own audition when the time was to come. I was completely intimidated at this point.
Finally, I was called to go up on stage. I took my bass up a set or two of stairs fairly petrified. When I got on the stage, as expected, there was a screen between myself and the audience where I knew that members of the bass section and other symphony people, including possibly Rostropovich himself. Although later I found out that he only comes to the finals.
On stage with me was a member of the orchestra, who directed me to play each of several orchestra parts including Mozart 40th, Beethoven’s 5th, Prokofiev 9th. I was able to play and get through them, but I was so nervous that I am sure that I was rushing the tempos, smearing though some of the 16th note runs to say the least. When I was done, I went back down the stairs feeling about as badly as I have every felt. The auditions were in rounds of 10 bass players where at the end of the round, they indicated who in the group made it to the finals. It was some small comfort that no one in our group of 10 was selected for the finals. It didn’t really make me much feel better. I left the hall feeling a huge disappointment in how I had completely blown the audition by being so ultra-nervous that I couldn’t play up to the level I was prepared for. Even at my best, I might not have been selected, but I was decimated by my poorer than normal performance. This was so far away from “Performing in the Zone”.
A few weeks later, I had an audition to be the paid principal bass player for a local symphony, and I was much improved at that audition and even got the gig. For years afterward, I passed many auditions for groups, and had a wonderful experience playing. However, to this day I am still uncomfortable with auditions. The techniques in Jon’s book, Performing in the Zone have already helped me and have motivated my to use this technique in my work environment when preparing for meetings. in addition to performing music. Thanks, Jon.
You can find and buy the book here, I highly recommend it.
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