From childhood trauma, to professional bow shake, to the elephant in the room: Beta Blockers.
Join host and violist Yannick Dondelinger for a frank, funny and intimate discussion with fellow MCO musicians around the effects, the origins, and some controversial solutions to having stage fright.
Stage fright is something we can all relate to, wether presenting a speech, teaching class, or chairing a meeting. This is especially true for the musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, who are out there on the worlds concert stages in front of thousands of people, every week, every year.
Listen to how our experienced orchestra members handle the "unspeakable" in this very personal double episode.
A full transcript of the episode is copied below.
Enjoy listening to the latest episode of the MCO's podcast, Between The Bars, on your favourite streaming service.
Also availabe on: Deezer | Stitcher | Castbox | Pocket Casts
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Between the bars
[Music excerpt: Debussy - L’après-midi d’un faune]
Yannick Dondelinger: Hi, I'm Yannick Dondelinger and this is Between the Bars, the podcast of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. A show that takes you behind the scenes and beyond the music. Through conversations with the artists and people we meet on our journey exploring the world. Okay, so there's been a gap. The last Between the Bars episode was at the end of May, a conversation with the wonderful pianist Mitsuko Uchida called Rooted in Music. After that, I had a long summer holiday and then some procrastination. Now Autumn leaves are here, and a new season of classical music in concert halls around the world is getting into its stride. And between the bars is finally back. We have loads of interesting conversations for you to listen to in the coming months. To kick off, we're starting with the big one the elephant in the room, stage fright. Now most of us will get stage fright at some point in our lives, whether it's as a performer going through a job interview, speaking at a meeting, talking at a family gathering, holding a press conference, or even just trying to control a room of kids at a birthday party. For my part, I actually get stage fright listening to my own voice. And who knows, maybe that's why I procrastinate when recording podcast episodes for this two part episode about stage fright. I interviewed friends and colleagues in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra back in June when we headlined the Ojai Music Festival in California. Now, if you've never heard of this festival, a quote from the wonderful Alex Ross of The New Yorker magazine says it all. The Ojai Music Festival has been raising a finely calibrated ruckus each spring since 1947. Ruckus. Another fabulous word that you might not at first associate with classical music, except maybe the legendary Paris premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring. And it's no coincidence, actually, that I mentioned Stravinsky, because being the most celebrated composer living in LA, close to Ojai, way back in 1947, it was in his name that the Ojai Festival was started. But the word ruckus also gives you a clue as to how much artistic fun a bunch of musicians can really have performing at a summer festival and being one of North America's most prestigious. It felt perfect for exploring the theme of stage fright. Well, I hope you enjoy the frank and informal feel of these two episodes. There are plenty of stories, funny anecdotes, and generally really solid perspectives from a bunch of musicians who have spent most of their adult lives playing together on the biggest classical stages around the world. Just to add, you're listening to Debussy's gorgeous composition L'après-midi d'un faune, the Afternoon of a Faun, for solo flute and ensemble. Taken from one of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra's broadcasts at the Ojai Festival, there'll be music from Ojai throughout the next two episodes. And yes, I will remind you of the titles at the end. Finally, for those of you listening, performer or otherwise, looking for concrete answers to the mystery of stage fright, just know this you're not going to get a professional, scientific or psychological analysis. On the topic of stage fright, and the MCO artists interviewed for these two episodes happened to all be male and living in the same house during the festival, so unfortunately, not much diversity represented there either. What you will get, however, is a treasure trove of lifelong lessons and learning curves. Call it a toolbox of experience and experiment that might just help you understand what makes you tick. Helps you to live with your stage fright, and maybe even gets you in touch with your stage fun.
Ben Newton: I'm Ben. I play the viola and I've played with Mahler Chamber Orchestra on and off since 2016.
Justin Caulley: I'm Justin. I'm a violist, and I've played with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on and off since 2006.
Michiel Commandeur: My name is Michiel. I play the violin, and I'm doing that in the chamber orchestra since we founded the Marlowe Chamber Orchestra.
Johannes Lörstad: My name is Johannes. I also play the violin. And like Michiel, I joined the Mahler Chamber Orchestra since the very beginning. Very happy about that.
Joel Hunter: Hello, I'm Joel and I'm also a viola player. Been playing for about 22 years, I think. Not a founding member, but pretty. Pretty close. Yeah.
Yannick Dondelinger: Anyone who never had stage fright. Put your hands up now. Great. Excellent.
Michiel Commandeur: Nobody put their hands up.
Yannick Dondelinger: Good. So no one needs to leave the room, then. Good. What is stage fright, then? Spontaneously. What does the definition of stage fright mean to each of you? Who wants to start?
Johannes Lörstad: Well, I think it's the fear that when you perform that it's not going to work. And I remember that from my young age. It's much better now. When you're older, you get used to it and you learn to deal with it. But when you're young and everything is new and Um, you rehearse and you notice that it works really well sometimes, but not every time. So you can't take anything for granted. So your fear is that when you have this one chance to perform your piece, um, it won't work. And you don't know that before. And that can really freak you out. Um, until you have enough experience. You've done it many times, and you actually, for the moment, hopefully you learn that it will be okay, but you have to go through this few concert performance of being really scared and not knowing is it going to work or not? And hopefully it will work and that will give you positive encouragement for the future.
Yannick Dondelinger: So it's performing. It's performing the piece in the moment. It's having to produce it in the moment.
Joel Hunter: Yeah, that's right actually. But it for me it's it's an incredibly interesting, um, phenomenon in a way. Because because we can all play and we all play and practice ourselves individually. So we all we're all very confident and secure in our in our ability. But as soon as other people start listening, weird things happen. You know, like a physical reaction in your body means that things just don't work as well as they do when you're in a room on your own, for example. I mean, you know, weird things happen to your hand. Weird things happen. In my case, my legs. I mean, you know, there's just weird things happen and it's unexplainable. And, you know, of course, it's a pressure of of of of wanting to to, you know, kind of show what you can do in front of other people. And often physically, you're held back by, by, you know, a sort of reaction in your body. That's how I would explain stage fright.
Ben Newton: Sometimes I find in a concert you just have this feeling where I don't know where it's physically. You tighten up a little bit. Um, and sometimes it is a physical thing. Sometimes it's more a mental thing, and it's a state of mind that you, for whatever reason, you can't concentrate on just the very basic thing of just playing your instrument with other people. Um, and that's kind of a major frustration because you think, hang on a minute, I'm a professional musician. I should just be able to do it. And it's a weirdness to me that you can do it some of the time, but for whatever reason, and it's not not even sometimes. Say you go to a really big hall, a really famous hall, like the, you know, sort of, I don't know, Hamburg or Berlin or, you know, sort of Carnegie Hall. I've, I mean, I, I've had it there, but I've also not had it there. I've had the nicest concert I've ever had in, uh, for example, Royal Albert Hall, which is quite a big space. It's 6000 people looking at you. But I've also had I'll be honest, I've had major stage fright in the Albert Hall as well. On a separate instance. So I don't think it's the place that it is. What's very interesting is when you have concerts, uh, in a tour and let's say you have 6 or 7 concerts in different halls and you play the same repertoire. Each concert is different, and you can feel a different stage of something. Uh, call it stage fright if you like, and you feel something different each time. And that might be physical. It might be bow shakes or string players, or it might just be you. Just you just kind of like, do weird stuff. It's like you don't quite engage. You don't quite play the right notes. You make the weirdest mistakes that you never would make in a rehearsal.
Justin Caulley: I mean, there's also an aspect of self-reflection that also happens, sort of appealing away. Um, yeah. I've been in therapy for a while because I've become obsessed with like, um, something happened at some at some point in my development as a musician. And then I started having, like, these really weird sort of attacks on stage where it was just like my pulse would get very high and, and then, um, you know, and my hands would get very shaky and it would sort of come and go in waves and, um, at some point, um, yeah, I realized, okay, I need to like, face this. So for me, it's also kind of like a peeling away of, of sort of protection that as maybe even as children, as musicians, we find ways to kind of like protect ourselves from stressful situations. And actually, for me, stage fright has become almost like an inverted phenomenon where like opening up and reflecting about myself has has caused these like weird spaces to open up which are which they in themselves are scary because now it is sometimes really intense for me to go out there because because of all the people watching and because I feel like I'm becoming more vulnerable than I was when I was a kid and just like, didn't think it had trauma, didn't think about it, just kind of puffed up my chest and like, got through things. Um, but I think, I think there is an aspect of stage fright that's also very healthy because it's like also just, um, perhaps like looking at things the way they really are and opening up and and and existing in the this like terrible beauty of risky life, you know, which is actually what we do. I mean, it's like to, to, uh, to, to make yourself strong in order not to be in the moment is kind of a oftentimes the way musicians get through things. But, um, that's actually like stage fright can be maybe a development for the better in a sense.
Michiel Commandeur: Yeah. It's, uh, it's been quite a big subject in my life, actually. Stage fright. And I always noticed that it's not something that that is happening before the concert. Like, before I go on stage, it happens at a certain moment in a concert where you totally don't expect it. Like, I once had a very bad attack of being really tense and sweaty and could hardly make a bow stroke anymore. During the second violin part of the slow movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. You know, not a thing that you should should be nervous about or could be nervous about, even. But, um, there was just something in, in, you know, the problem is that you have to be capable of as soon as you feel something coming, because you feel it coming in a way, it's something that comes up that you know psychologically how to deal with that. And if you don't, you start to panic and you feel completely lonely. On stage, you think you're the only one and you think that everybody else is completely fine. And you look at everybody else and you think they're all fine just having fun. And I'm in trouble here. And I'm just, you know, on my own. And that makes it only worse. So. So you need a lot of psychological luggage or baggage to, to to be able to, to solve it during the moment and keep on playing. It's also something that maybe we get to that later, but it's something that's still a bit hard to talk about with people, because you do think that you're the only one, and you do think that everybody else is just having fun and just playing and not having stage fright. But now, fortunately, nobody raised their hand. To begin your first question, so I feel already a lot better. But I must say, when I was young, it didn't really come to my mind. Stage fright didn't really happen, but then when I got older, it got worse. And I must also say that when I'm then panicking or getting nervous, it's not because there's an audience, but it's because I'm surrounded by these great musicians and it's something that I want don't want them to notice because I know the audience won't notice. That's that's normally fine because it's too far away and you're just part of it, you know? But it's I'm then getting more nervous about the reaction or if there would be any for my colleagues more than from the audience. So it's actually fright for being part of this high level of music playing together instead of the audience, just.
Yannick Dondelinger: So very quickly, spontaneously. Um, there's some major symptoms that you've experienced. You've already I've already heard a few. But anyway, this is major symptoms you've experienced of stage fright, I think. For me, I think of things like sound blindness, sweating, shaking, memory blindness, anxiety and the classic one elevated heart rate. These are all things I experience.
Ben Newton: This is probably not a weird one in a sense, but I don't think it's a heart rate thing because I think, you know, I don't think my heart rate particularly goes up and down that much. I mean, I wear a Fitbit sometimes, so I tend to know about it. I have, um, if I have a, you know, say a big solo coming up or some sort of big thing I know is just me. I have this thing inside. I can feel my heart pound. It doesn't get faster, but my whole body starts to pound. And it happens like 30s before. And I'm thinking, what is going on here? It doesn't get any quicker, but it's like it just goes like this and I just go, what is going on? I was like, stop it. But it's a weird one that that's one. And I'm sure a doctor would probably say that's an elevated heart rate, but it doesn't feel like it is. It just feels like an out of body experience. Wow.
Justin Caulley: I've had all the classic symptoms for sure. I've also had moments where like just out of pure survival mode, like, yeah, like Ben said, this sort of out of body thing starts happening where you're just like, oh, that's me, I'm doing this. Yeah. And I mean, sometimes, I mean, sometimes I wish. Yeah, exactly. And I mean sometimes, like, especially for auditions, like, I can, like, practice visualizing, seeing myself from outside and and actually it helps. I mean, you can use that, but it's like a different it's it's like some sort of different awareness. Yeah. Sorry. Am I talking too loud? Yeah. No, that that is kind of a symptom though, where you're in this, like stress stress mode and something's happening. And then you realize like, oh, you're, you know, it's fight or flight and then you're just like, you're fighting and fighting at the same time. That's definitely that has happened to me before. Yeah.
Michiel Commandeur: The first thing that you should tell yourself is that it's fine. You know, that it's okay, that the world is not going to end. You know, it's not the end of the world. Even you can even walk off stage. You can even cancel the concert. You know nobody's going to die. It's all fine. So you should never, you know that your mind is exaggerating the problem, actually. But, you know, it's like having a little wound in your inside, in your mouth, and you think it's huge. And then you look in the mirror and you think, what? It's just this tiny red spot there. Why am I. It feels like it's like this, you know, it's a bit. So you should always tell yourself, it's okay.
Joel Hunter: I just want to say, i've never found anything that works. I mean, in those moments, you just can't stop it. It's like a train, you know? You have the solo coming up, and as soon as you start feeling that kind of panic and fear, I've never, never been able to overcome it, you know? And then and then you just have to hold on for dear life. Hope that physically you could somehow make things work and get through it. And, you know, you survive. As Justin said, you sort of it's fight and flight. You just fight and, you know, you literally fight to kind of survive. I mean, yeah, I'm sure people, like many people have written books on this stuff and there are millions of techniques as to what you do in those moments. But for me, nothing has worked.
[Music excerpt: Debussy - L’après-midi d’un faune]
Yannick Dondelinger: Childhood. We're going to go to childhood now. I began thinking of childhood as possibly where the root of my stage fright was, and then realized it was actually the time in my life when I didn't have any. I had no idea of my lack of technique when performing. Um. I performed crazy improvisations on the piano in middle school assemblies, and I didn't really understand. Well, obviously I didn't understand what a paying audience was. No one told me what I was doing wrong. Of course. Um, so how was your childhood? Um, did you have no fear? Did you enjoy being in the center of attention? Or for example, did you have lots of fear? Did you have family issues? Anxiety of standing up in class, for example? What's your connection with stage fright in your childhood?
Michiel Commandeur: Very good question, Yannick. Thank you very much because I think there's a big connection. And, um, you know, I'm from a family of violinists. My mother is a violinist, my grandmother was a violinist. And when I was six, my grandfather, the husband of my violin grandmother, gave me a violin for my birthday. And from that moment I had to play the violin, which I didn't ask for at that time. It was just a present, and I actually kind of liked it, you know, it went quite well and everything. And the first couple of months, even the first 2 or 3 years, went really smooth. But I always had to play for my grandfather. And, uh, when he would visit our house, he would come to me and he would say, okay, Michiel, what are you going to play for me? And my mom would look at me with a soothing face, you know, like, it's going to be fine, darling. And I said, well, I'm going to play this easy concerto by reading and okay, let me. And then I would go up and play it for him, and he would be in the back of the room and he wouldn't. When I would be finished, he wouldn't react. He would just look at my mother and whisper something in her ear and then leave it. And I was just standing there and didn't know what to do, and it was quite hard for me. So I got more and more nervous to play for him because, you know, he was so critical because his wife was like a super professional big soloist in Germany in those days. So he, he thought I should be like that as well. But I also had other interests, like playing football with my mates and watching movies and whatever. So, um, then later I knew that my also my mum, she came from the school of Oscar Back, the very famous violin teacher who used to call her every morning at 7.30 to ask her if she was already practicing. And, you know, yeah, that's not a joke. Um, and she was raised with everything. It always has to be good, you know? It was. There was quite a lot of pressure on it. My mum did never pressure me. I must admit, because she said, you just do whatever you want or whatever. But she came from that background, you know. So this atmosphere has always been a bit in the family that if you don't perform well, it's not good enough. So it was never good enough in a way. You know, they loved it that this young man who played the violin. But in a way it was never good enough. So I think that there's a big connection with the the stage fright later that, you know, that actually everything you do is not really good enough. So it's very hard to be to be satisfied then, you know. And especially if you see people around you that play so amazingly that you think, well, I'll never be as good as them. You know, I have to just adapt. And so you put yourself in a very vulnerable position, which makes it much easier for the stage fright to, to to come in and make you feel really nervous. So. Well, that's one connection.
Johannes Lörstad: It's very interesting what Michiel says because this family pressure. Um, it's both good and bad, I think, for musicians on. I mean, we we are really good. All of us know. And to get that, well, you have to be really in yourself. You have to be really nerdy and really fight a lot to get that good. Or you have to have family who maybe mentally pushes you. Um, if you just have parents who just like, oh, great, it sounds great. Everything, you might not improve so much. Maybe if in my because in my case, I had a mother who is a really good cellist. She never pushed me. She thought everything I did was just fantastic. But I had a stepmother who wasn't allowed to play an instrument when she was young. So when I played the violin, she was very jealous. I didn't know that at the time, but she always was giving a very negative impression. Oh, is it practicing again? Oh, does he have to play again? I could always hear this. So I always felt like, oh, it's not good enough what I do because she doesn't like it though, so I go with this pressure from that I have when I play, I have to play well. It wasn't good, but in one way, maybe she made me want to practice more because I really want to play well.
Justin Caulley: Well, um. I've gone back many times in my memories to like, well, my first memory of performing in front of people. I guess I was like five years old. I had just started the violin and, um, you know, I came. I lived in a very small town in eastern New Mexico. Um, there were there was like the husband of the violin professor of the small college in in that town lived the street behind us. I remember starting these violin lessons, um, because my dad played the cello. Not not particularly well. He was a pretty good pianist, but not a very good cellist. But I wanted to play my dad's cello, and I was like, you know, one foot tall. So my my parents said, no, you're going to play the violin. And, um, at some point, of course, I didn't really understand what it was about because I had heard a lot of CDs of like, Berlin Philharmonic and with Richard Strauss and stuff. And for me, that was playing, you know, because my dad loved that stuff. And then I stepped up and just tried to play some really simple thing. Mary had a little lamb or something and couldn't get through it in front of the the people. There was a recital at the university for the students of this teacher. I was I was taking lessons with. And um, I mean, I had this idea from CDs and from from just hearing around that, like, oh, this is how it goes. Like you play the instrument and it sounds a certain way. And then as I played for people, I realized I don't sound like that. That's not me. And that I think that was like the beginning of of my journey on the instrument was like, there's this, this ideal. And nobody had taught me how to get to that ideal. All I knew was, I'm not there. Like there's something missing. And and I think that's also really been an interesting journey for me personally, just to go back to that moment because I was very upset. You know, I was like, I had to stop and then start again. And I understood this was very embarrassing, you know? And of course, this brings up the shame factor, which is big. Um, and then I got very, very angry. And then and then this, uh, this man and, uh, like the father of another one of the kids wanted, wanted to congratulate me. I think he actually thought I was doing okay. And and then I just told him angrily that it wasn't good. And I know it's not good and stuff. You know, I was five years old, so, uh. Yeah, it was pretty traumatic. Um, and, uh, and I do wonder if that start of, of this kind of like, you know, the recording industry and all this editing, and maybe there wasn't even editing on some of the old records I heard. But, I mean, you know, you you heard this sort of perfection around you, even if you didn't necessarily grow up in, uh, in one of the cultural centers of the world like this, you know, the record industry has, has given us such amazing, um, audio examples of, of great art, like, and and as a child, I, I think that was also something that played into my, my deficit, you know, my, my feeling of deficit. Actually.
Yannick Dondelinger: I find that quite a tragic story. That's that's not the way I started. I mean, I've had massive stage fears, but luckily for me, I feel luckily I started when I was very young. My parents just let me explore. I wanted to explore instruments. I wanted to explore the piano or drum and the violin, or listen to film music and try and recreate it. And and I felt that I was starting to explore an instrument on my own terms. And that's not the essence of what I hear from you.
Justin Caulley: Yeah, i mean, in a sense, it was like it was a trauma. That's why I bring up that story. Just because it's like, I think part of the frustration and the and the fright goes back to these roots for me, of kind of feeling some sort of deficit or feeling some sort of trauma or like it has been said, like already not being good enough. And I maybe felt that with my mother a little bit. Not, not really with my dad, but um, but there are different sort of standards that we have. So, yeah, I mean, I think for me it was maybe both bad and good because it created some sort of vacuum that I then like. Uh, had to had to kind of fill up and it became a journey, a lifelong journey. So, I mean, I think, I think some of these things can be turned into like really positive aspects, but they start out as trauma actually did.
Yannick Dondelinger: Did anyone have quite a free childhood or did anyone sort of not have?
Ben Newton: I would say with my childhood that I maybe it's a slightly unusual thing here. We're all string players around the table professionally, but I didn't start playing the violin until I was nine. And then as soon as I grew, I was given a viola. And that was the end of my violin career. But I was from the age of 4 or 5, really, as long as I can remember I was a piano player, right? I that was my that was my first instrument. And actually in some ways remains. So I don't play the piano very often, but I can still sit down at the piano, I mean, particularly jazz and, you know, sort of that style of music that's really for me. And I can still sit down at the piano after six months, after not playing it, and just sit there for hours and play and, you know, play to a, even if I say so myself, a pretty good standard. That's the thing I feel most comfortable with. So this, this, this whole stagefright thing is, is quite interesting that the my, my profession is a viola player. Um, and I do wonder whether there's a certain amount of pressure on that, that it's what brings the money in. So therefore, is there a certain amount of pressure to perform to a certain level in the back of my mind?
Yannick Dondelinger: For me, the first time I felt actually I was thinking about I thought about this a lot. This is the next question. When was the first time you felt stage fright? For me, it was when I had to take a graded exam, you know, associated board exams. Um, I didn't I loved playing my instrument, playing in orchestra, and I also enjoyed having my lessons. But then I had to go to this person's house and take this exam. Graded exam. I started to like you quite late age of ten and that was it. You know, I was terrified, literally terrified, standing in front of this person, delivering on demand in a silent room in front of this person. Not what I wanted to deliver, but what they told me to deliver. C major scale. So I read this line of music, you know.
Johannes Lörstad: Now, I remember when I was little, I never really had a stage fright because playing then was concert wasn't so special. I didn't do them so often, but luckily they were not so bad. But my first stage fright was when I was studying music, Malmö Music high school. I had my yearly exam for the teachers and that was before Christmas. And that day in the canteen they had free coffee. I wasn't drinking very much coffee then, but because it was free I had like five five cups. So I drank all this coffee and I came into the exam. I should play Schubert's Sonata, I think. And I think my bow shook like crazy. My brother. Like this? No. Even so, the teacher said. Listen, Johannes, sweetie, just take a minute and try again. And I felt it was so scary. So that gave me a slight. I mean, my OCD got maybe a bit worse then. So, I mean, I never, I never want to drink coffee. I mean, for years, I never drank coffee on a performance day. I even started to create different recipes for myself to avoid that feeling again by, for example, always had to sleep, one hour in the afternoon before a concert, always had to play through the whole program very slowly and carefully. I got this recipe that somehow worked, and I've been working a lot now to get rid of that, so I don't have that anymore. Luckily I can drink coffee before concerts. Now I feel fine. I don't have to sleep on the same day. I don't have to do this anymore because I realized that was OCD more than actually what I actually needed. So luckily I could work away from that. But that was my first. And that created quite some, quite some dilemma for me that I had to work a long time to get rid of. Yeah.
Joel Hunter: That's actually funny. I was sitting here listening. To the answers, and I was thinking, I never I never had stage fright when I was young. I just it was just fun and I was good. I was obviously kind of good at playing from a young age. So I was just, I kind of quite enjoyed sort of showing off in front of people. Um, so that's what I was thinking. But then. Yeah. Center of attention. Exactly. But then. But then. And then you said you started talking about the associated board exams, and I suddenly had flashbacks of. Yeah, like. And I suddenly realized that I was terrified of those exams. Yeah. And I, I suddenly remembered sitting in the waiting room because there was always a waiting room, because they used to do, like, a dentist. It was back to back, wasn't it? You know, you had your slot and your time, and then you had to go and just basically wait in a waiting room, and then you'd go into the room and do your thing. And I remember being terrified in, in like waiting to go in there. So it's just funny that I haven't thought about that until you just started talking about it now. Yeah. So I'm thinking, God, actually, that's not true. I definitely did have it then. Traumatized from that, from those exams. Yeah. And so maybe, you know, maybe it is something as simple as that. Just these, these sort of events just stay with you and affect you. You know, like having felt it as a child, then, you know, it's there and and it can come back at any time. I don't know. Yeah. Interesting.
[Music excerpt: Debussy - L’après-midi d’un faune]
Justin Caulley: My heart rate rising and sort of his blood pressure. And I just couldn't get the bow on the string. And it was just like, wo wo wo wo wo wo wo. And I had the real shakes. And I really heard people talking about me. No joke. No joke.
Yannick Dondelinger: Oh, ouch. Yeah. Worst nightmare ever for a performer. Except it wasn't a nightmare. It actually happened to Justin in the second and last episode of Stage Fright. Joel, Justin, Johannes, Michael and Ben are going to offer themselves up, bear it all their worst stage fright moments, just to show that even the most seasoned performers crash and burn on stage. And then we broach the taboo list of taboos drugs, medication and anything else you need to stride out onto that stage and do your thing. Speak to you next time on Between the Bars. The podcast of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The music you heard in this episode was Claude Debussy's symphonic poem ‘L’après midi d’un faune’, Prelude to the afternoon of a Faun, recorded at the 2024 Ojai Music Festival in California and performed beautifully by MCO musicians Josephine Olech, flute, kyeong Ham, oboe, Vicente Alberola Ferrando, clarinet, Martin Piechotta, percussion, Johannes Lörstad and Geoffroy Schied, violins, Ben Newton, viola, Martin Leo Schmidt, cello, and Johane Gonzalez, double bass. Between the bars wants to say a huge thank you to the Ojai Festival for the use of broadcast material and of course, thanks to guests Joel Hunter, Michiel Commandeur, Ben Newton, Justin Caulley and Johannes Lörstad for opening up about stage fright. Between the bars podcast is produced by Matthias Mayr, Benita Schauer and myself, Yannick Dondelinger and is a production of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Don't forget, keep listening.
COMMENTS