Improvisation & Performance Anxiety
Since childhood, I have struggled with performance anxiety.
My family encouraged me as a young instrumental musician, performing at recitals and band concerts. In my formative years, I sang with choirs and jazz band. I performed in musicals and theatre productions. I continued to play in orchestras and bands. I built many skills in many art forms and excelled, but fought against my brain during performances.
My Anxiety Mindset
When I reached adulthood, through reflection and therapy, I realized that I struggled with severe anxiety. I had previously considered myself “a nervous person” and “a perfectionist” but came to know that I am actually not myself when I am anxious.
Stress and adrenaline can be positive for some performers, but for me, they distract me from the task at hand. Anxiety pulls me out of the creative moment. Instead of giving my all and being present in the artistry, I think about what difficult passage is to come, while beating myself up about a past mistake. Because the notes were written on the page, they were supposed to be perfectly executed, and any derivation was not excellence.
Frankly, it made performing pretty miserable. With my focus distracted by the reflection and interpretation of the past and the preparation of what was to come, I didn’t stand a chance. After college, I took several years away from performing, even though I had built an incredible amount of skill in several art forms. It was just too frustrating and hard on my confidence.
The Need for Creative Outlets
Even though it was hard to feel like a constant failure at performing, over time I noticed that there was a lot missing from my life when I wasn’t persuing performance arts. I had turned to painting as an expressive outlet, but it didn’t give me the same amount of joy as creating an artistic production with others.
I thought I resigned myself to mediocrity in performance as a means to keep going. I told myself the rehearsal process brought me enough joy to be able to dismiss the negative feelings of the performance. I continued to play with my community’s orchestra, the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, alongside a stellar stand partner, Bill Child, who seemed to have control over his nerves. I happily played second under his leadership.
I also took a risk and joined community theatre productions. While I had shied away from this art form because of my social anxiety (“What will they think of me if I make a mistake? Will the other performers accept me? I always feel different.”) I had always been drawn to theatre. After several productions, I started being cast in bigger parts, and eventually, I started to notice that for some reason, when I was onstage, the nerves started to dissipate, I stopped trying to think of my next line, and I started to actually be present in the scene.
It was exciting and I wondered why I couldn’t apply this to my musical performances.
What’s Written is “Right”
There are a few reasons why a theatre performance was different for me than an orchestra performance.
There are reactions in theatre: laughs, sighs and gasps can be heard in the audience, and these moments force the actor to be flexible in the moment. In orchestra, there is applause between pieces only (it’s a no-no to even express your appreciation between movements), and audience participation is rare.
Ad libbing is not a thing unless expressly written in music in the form of a cadenza. Even then, many cadenzas are pre-meditated, and even written out from past great performer’s cadenzas. Ad libbing happens a fair amount in community theatre (we are amateurs, after all). Though we definitely aim to honor the text (Shakespeare took all that time to put things in pentameter), you can’t pretend that set piece didn’t just fall. You need to react in the moment.
I have long thought that scored notes on a page are what is right, and anything else is wrong.
Learning Improvisation
Theatre performances seemed to be my entry point into improvisation, and I eventually took on more chances to improvise, specifically with the bassoon, my orchestral instrument, to address my orchestra performance issues.
I attended a few Jazz Jam sessions at my local music collaborative space Hot Spot Music, magnificently led by my friend and fellow artist Martha Larson. Martha is a phenomenal jazz cellist, specializing in gypsy jazz. She and I met through the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, and her jazz experience inspired me to give a Jazz Jam session a try.
I was nervous the first time I attended, though the participants were welcoming. The format of the session was to play several jazz standards and then circle around to each musician to allow them a chance to improvise. When it came to me, I panicked and read the charts, resulting in an extremely boring bass line. It was fine, but nothing special. I thought I will have to practice this for a long time to offer anything memorable.
The next time the baton was passed to me to improvise, I decided to look away from the book with the charts. With my ears and knowledge of the key of the music, what I produced was infinitely better than when my eyes were buried in the book.
I had also begun practicing with a friend of mine, Page Nelson, who is a brilliant singer and guitarist. Our duo covered mostly folk tunes that I had never learned. I didn’t grow up listening to the greats including Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, John Prine and more. Every song was new to me, which ended up being a wonderful gift. No preconceived notions of how it should sound, no past recordings swayed how I reacted to the melodies that Page offered. I just listened to her and made up lovely bass lines to accompany her.
Inspiration for a New Film
My experience has led me to believe that improvisation can be the height of creative expression. Instead of trying to reproduce someone else’s ideas from the past, trusting yourself to create something new in real time has proven to be much more rewarding. My ears know what to do when I play instruments. My body knows what to do when I dance. My heart knows what to do when I’m in a play. Trusting in that and allowing myself to be enveloped in the expression has made me love creating again.
This idea is the inspiration for my latest short film, which will be titled, simply, “Improvisation." Through generous funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board, I’ll create a situation where dancers can react to a pre-recorded music track by Stephanie Henry and offer an original interpretation in real-time. Once I cut the footage together, I’ll screen it for musicians to offer their own original improvisations to layer onto the piece.
I’m excited to debut the new film in February 2023. The following several articles will outline the process of creating the work.
