Performing music in front of an audience can be pretty daunting, but also exhilarating! Here are few top tips for music performance:
Communication
It’s so important that your audience understands the story or emotion of the piece you’re performing. Markings like dynamics and articulation all add to the overall effect of a piece and can help keep your audience engaged. If you’re singing make sure to enunciate the text as clearly as you can and always try to perform to your audience and not at them. A handy tip for communication is to always look just above the head of your audience whilst you’re performing – it will seem like you are looking at them, but you’ll never fully make eye contact with anyone (which can be uncomfortable for both you and the poor person you look at!)
Managing mistakes
It’s always frustrating to make mistakes in a performance when you’ve worked so hard on a piece, but everyone makes mistakes – even professionals! It’s how you deal with them that matters. If you make a mistake, don’t react! Chances are your audience won’t even have noticed, so try to keep going and brush it off. If after you keep going things still haven’t gone to plan and find that you need to restart, then just restart. It’s okay to have another go and show the audience (and yourself) what you can do.
Preparation
You’ll already have worked hard behind the scenes to practice and prepare your piece, so make sure you allow yourself to set up properly when you get on stage. If you’re using a music stand, stool, or chair check it is at the right height for you to use, set your music out and on the correct starting page for each piece to avoid faffing or panicking about paper mid performance, and check the lighting is set up so that you can still see your music but you aren’t getting a beam of shining light directly into your eyes! If you need to tune your instrument you can absolutely take your time to really listen and check it! Right before you start your performance it can be super helpful just to take a few moments to breathe and steady your nerves – you don’t have to start until you are comfortable and ready!
Enjoy yourself!
If you enjoy your performance then so will your audience! Picking music that you enjoy and want to perform always helps with this. No matter what happens if you keep smiling and stay confident your audience will love it!