Stepping on Stage
I’ve thought about how to write this blog post for almost a year and wondered how I could talk about returning to normal concert life “post pandemic” while the pandemic continues to profoundly shape so much of our lives. Returning to “normal” performances on stage has shaken everything I used to understand about live performances. And to explain why, I need to tell you about two performances that defined this past year for me.
The first was Christmas Eve 2020; I spent the day virtually volunteering for two different hospitals to share music for patients and staff. It wasn’t difficult music, but I was exhausted and happy to finish my “on call” slot when I received a call from a doctor at the hospital. He apologized for calling after my volunteer slot was over but explained he had an end of life patient who was all alone and asked if I could spend time with her.
I will never forget that performance.
Spending time with a stranger on their death bed with the sounds of Christmas music mingling with the beeps of their ventilator seemed like the cruelest of ironies. Watching somebody die, alone, on Christmas Eve still haunts me whenever I think of it. I spent a long time with her, hoping she felt less alone and comforted as she came to the end of her life. I stopped doing as many hospital concerts after that night, just because it all became too heavy. It frustrated me enormously, I wasn’t a front line worker at the hospital, but I felt too drained to give anymore.
In January, I shifted the focus and started preparing to audition for concert management. (Concert management is when an agency books your concerts for you.) I knew I wanted to continue connecting with more people through performances and this seemed like the logical next step. I didn’t want to think about chasing after big competitions; after the pandemic I didn’t want to focus on winning something for “myself” but instead I simply wanted to share music with others.
And then came the second of those two performances. 7 months later I finally made it to Germany to finally see my Great Grandmother, the person I am perhaps the closest to in the world. An impeccable musician in her own right, we have always communicated through music which makes up for my non-fluent German proficiency. The first night there I happily settled in at her 1875 Bechstein and started playing through my audition repertoire. While I was playing I heard a strange thumping behind me and turned around to see my Uroma listening while connected to her oxygen tank. Suddenly, all of those hospital concerts came rushing back and instead of watching patients on oxygen through a screen, I was right in front of one. Suddenly, I realized I was once again sharing music with somebody coming to the end of their life but this time… but this time it wasn’t a stranger.
I ended up coming back to Germany right before my big audition to spend more time with her. She was hungry for live music again; I think music has always been her life line just as it has always been mine. While I will never regret going back, stepping on to stage for my big audition less than two weeks later was uniquely emotionally challenging.
Now stepping back on stage for auditions, master classes, or performances feels insanely bizarre because I don’t know who I’m playing for. I used to play for myself; it was how I best communicated who I was and how I felt. And isn’t that what you’re supposed to when you get on stage? You’re supposed to share yourself, be authentically yourself through your own interpretation, give your own message.
I’m trying to think of this as chance to rethink how I perform. I haven’t actively thought about this since I was a teenager because while I’ve always had nerves, stage fright wasn’t something I really experienced. Now when I’m on stage I feel almost as isolated as when I was adjusting to performing over Zoom. Now instead of just focusing on communicating, I’m under the spotlight of adjudication, jury member comments, professors, graded performances, graduate school... And I’m trying to balance what I really want to do (communicate) with the external need to chase perfection, (isn’t that what we’re taught to do in the Classical music world?).
So I’m going back to basics which for me is learning how to breathe deeply, how to feel grounded, and how to use my fingers as my voice to just communicate. And while I’m not fully comfortable on stage yet, I finally made some breakthroughs with how I produce sound (how I touch the piano keys to create different types of sound) that I have been actively looking for since I was 18. It’s strange how you can find answers to questions after you’ve stopped trying to answer them.
I’ve stopped trying to “push through” and “just do it” and I’m giving myself some time and space between each live performance. Merging what I learned over the past year and half with who I want to be going forward will take some time. I’m finding my way back and I think this time, performing will end up being so much more than it was before the pandemic.
