YOU’VE GOT AN AUDITION. You’re waiting outside the hall with a bunch of other singers. You’re nervous. Nobody else is. At least they don’t look it.
Can the other singers hear your heart pounding away in tempo di marcia? Can they tell your throat is tight, your hands and feet are freezing, your armpits are weeping and your stomach seems to be digesting itself? You need to pee. Again.
Then the voices start in your head. Why are you the only anxious one? Is everybody else on beta blockers? Or are they just better people? How can you possibly compete? You just know you’re going to miss that tricky entrance, smear the fioritura and clutch on the high C-sharp.
Why, oh why, do you still get so nervous after all these years? Why can’t you just relax, like your teacher always tells you? You should have taken that yoga and meditation class; why didn’t you? Mom always said you didn’t have enough gumption to make it, and if you don’t get this job she’ll say, “Well, honey, maybe it’s time to come home and get married.”
At this point your mind and body are spiraling out of control, and you have probably psyched yourself out of a good audition.
Time to stop tanking and get yourself some mental game. The good news is that there is a way to get a handle on your pre-performance spin cycle. Want to achieve optimal performance under stress? Tap into the program that the Big Leaguers use. That would be sports psychology. If it worked for Martina Navratilova and the San Francisco 49ers, it can work for you.
The better news is there is a sports psychologist who loves musicians; he is willing and able to help them perform at their peak, no matter what level of stress they are under. His name is Don Greene, Ph. D. He has taught his techniques at Juilliard. His book, Audition Success, is still the number one bestseller at the Juilliard Bookstore. That should tell you something.
His new book, Performance Success: Performing your Best Under Pressure (Routledge, 2002) shows you how find your center and your focus, and do battle with—not against—your nerves, using his tested-in-the-trenches combination of classic sports medicine and psychology combined with lots of self-scrutiny and a bit of commando training (Greene served in the Green Berets).
First thing you do is grab a pencil and take Greene’s Artist’s Performance Survey. You can also fill out the Survey online (dongreene.com). Don Greene will evaluate your personal performance profile via e-mail. Then you can sign on for some one-on-one coaching with the man himself, over the phone.
Unless, of course, you want some face time. In which case, you fly to Hawaii. These days Greene only does workshops in Hawaii. Circumstances and budgets being what they are, I had to interview him by phone.
Classical Singer: Aloha. What island are you on?
Don Greene: I’m on Oahu, east of Waikiki. It’s lovely here.
Look, Dr. Greene, what’s wrong with just popping a beta blocker and avoiding anxiety the easy way?
I’ll tell you. Ordinary psychologists treat anxiety—you know if someone is afraid to get on elevators. They treat the anxiety as the bad thing; they try to make people’s anxiety go away.
My approach is the opposite. Anxiety is a part of high level performance. You could think, “Oh my gosh! I’m so nervous—this is bad.” But athletes are taught that these feelings are normal, and they can use that high energy to win.
I would no more give a singer Inderal than I would make an Olympic swimmer drink a bottle of gin before the race. Why suppress that energy when you need it for dazzling performances! That adrenalin—you can use it!
I’ve been to hundreds of auditions, and I hear good singing; it’s correct, it’s comfortable, but opera isn’t about comfort. What wins is power, excitement, energy, enthusiasm, pizzazz! You need the adrenalin to power your voice.
I don’t tell my people not to take Inderal; they just don’t. They’re not more comfortable, but they have a strategy that lets them use that energy. And they win. If you want to be comfortable, don’t sing. Sit in front of a TV, or go to Hawaii and lie on the beach.
Do singers have special challenges that instrumentalists don’t have?
Singing is a tougher discipline. Singers pay more dues. At Juilliard, the instrumentalists are ready to audition and go out and earn money by their sophomore year. The singers won’t be ready until after graduate school. They have more to learn: languages, acting, repertoire. They live with their instruments all the time, and their instruments can catch a cold. Also, there is the visual component. It’s important how they look. A singer with an incredible instrument will usually do well, but sometimes she can lose out to someone who is not better but who is better looking.
How long has sports psychology been around?
It started in the early sixties. Bruce Ogilvie (known as the father of sports psychology) was a mentor of mine. He worked with the Dallas Cowboys and with basketball and baseball teams. In those days they had to sneak the sports psychologist in the back entrance!
In the eighties, individual athletes, for example tennis players and golfers, started using sports psychology. Now every Olympic team has a sports psychologist, and some college teams have them.
You’ve worked with Army Special Forces, SWAT teams, corporate execs, entrepreneurs, divers, skiers and golfers. How did you get started with musicians?
I’m the first sports psychologist to coach musicians. I was the first sports psychologist hired by a music school, and it was Juilliard! I did classes and seminars, I had a budget, and more and more people got interested and started coming to my classes.
My sports psych colleagues said, “What are you doing that for? Musicians don’t have any money!” But I love music, and I worked a lot with symphony players. After I got into opera, I saw that singers needed even more help.”
[Greene was lured to New York by the divine French hornist Julie Landsman, principal of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Juilliard faculty member. Landsman, having read about Greene’s successes with symphony players in an orchestral newsletter, asked Greene to coach four of her students for an upcoming Met Orchestra audition. He agreed.]
In the 1997 Met auditions for French horn, 59 people auditioned. My people came in numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5. I’m trying to convince Julie Landsman to come to Hawaii so we can do some more work together [In her preface to Performance Success, Landsman enthusiastically describes her personal experiences with Greene’s methods.]
Any other success numbers?
I have the New World Symphony. Before they worked with me, their audition success rate was 33 percent. After I trained the fellows, the rate was 62 percent! [The New World Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, director, is a three-year graduate fellowship program dedicated to preparing instrumentalists for what Thomas has called “The terrible focus of orchestral auditions.” The fellows play a full season in Miami, Florida, take masterclasses and undergo “mock auditions.” Greene is on the faculty.]
In the book you ‘fess up that you too had performance nerves. You panicked when you had to speak in public. How did you conquer your fear of the podium?
I learned sports psychology. I learned how to center from Bob Nideffer. He was my mentor. I can still get caught off-guard. Once in San Diego, I was asked to speak on the spur of the moment, just for a couple of minutes. I usually talk about sports psychology for two or three hours, no problem. But if I don’t prepare, if I don’t “set up for it,” well…
