I think as musicians we can nail down the one concert where we’ve felt above the stage. the final timpani roll of Mahler 2, the deafening silence after the last trumpet note of West Side Story, the last run of a drum corps show. These moments we experience as musicians define careers; they define our definition of “good” music and “good” performances. Personally, the career-defining moment for me was the summer of my junior year at the Quartz Mountain Arts Institute in Oklahoma. Basically, it is a summer arts festival for the top artists in Oklahoma, and that summer I was chosen to play percussion with the Quartz Mountain orchestra. That summer was the summer I decided to pursue music as a career. I can nail it down to a performance-we performed Ralph Vaughn Williams’ A London Symphony and after an amazing performance, I vividly remember the adrenaline rush that came with a MINUTE-LONG silence. In that moment, I felt like I was floating above the stage, I could hear my ears ringing, see my fingers shaking.
It was exhilarating.
From that performance and my guidance from Allen Tinkham, music director of the Chicago Youth Symphony, I found that music is my passion and I don’t want but NEED to pursue this as a career.
Okay, enough about my backstory, memories, and all the gooey stuff. The real question is, what made this performance so special? Why was it deafening? Why was it career-defining? Why was it great?
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Well first, let’s try and put some possibilities out there to interpret what a great performance is.
There are a couple routes to take this question head on, the first being what point of view are we looking at this from? The conductor? The performer? I think both of these pose different answers.
The conductor
Conductors are a different breed of musician. I mean who wants to stand in front of an ensemble and NOT play? (A lot of people actually) Personally, I enjoy conducting and the single greatest aspect of conducting to me is witnessing the emotional and physical effect of the music upon the humans in front of me. But what defines a great performance by a conductor? I think statically, a great performance could be defined by the conductor’s time. Was the ensemble able to read you perfectly? Did you mess up? Did the ensemble fall apart on your account? From these guidelines and more you could decide if the performance was great or not. However, I believe that a great performance is defined by the effect of your conducting onto the ensemble AND the audience. I personally LOVE watching the conductors during concerts and a confident conductor is a great conductor to the audience. The ironic part of this is that the conductors technically have NO effect on the music being played. The conductor could wave his/her arms around and it could absolutely have no effect on how the players perform, BUT when a conductor and an ensemble establish that spiritual, emotional connection through music, a performance can go from average to great.
The performer
We all have had that “special” performance. Like I said before, as performers, we can completely base our idea of a great performance on if we played the correct rhythms, pitches, or dynamics, but I think it goes WAY past that. We aren’t robots. We have passion, love, and spirit and I think these things play into our roles as performers. I personally have felt these kinds of connections with the best performances of my life. Out of breath, sweating, ears ringing; all this after playing crash cymbals for the Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Overture. Physically, the piece was not exhausting, but emotionally I was drained. I believe it takes a different type of mindset to achieve this level of performance in any setting. It may seem like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but I do believe your best performances come with an emotional and spiritual attachment. One of my favorite percussionists to watch perform is David Skidmore of Third Coast Percussion. After seeing him on youtube for many years now, and after an ethereal performance at PASIC 2019, it’s clear to me his passion and his emotional attachment to music jumps over the stage and effects the audience. The same goes for all the members of Third Coast, they truly understand performance and they’re receiving the credit they deserve. Wow that is a lot of words that might not make any sense, let me try and summarize. For me as a performer, to achieve a truly great performance, I must establish a physical, emotional, and spiritual connection to the music I’m playing.
This all plays into how we dissect performances. The mindset we have as audience members and performers play into our analysis of a performance. Are you watching a Beethoven Symphony? A Henry Cowell Concert Series? A New Music Ensemble performance? These factors play a big role on how you should interpret the musician’s performance as an audience member; music critic’s roles baffle me sometimes through their reviews. Whether a bad performance or great performance, we as musicians can learn from them and use our experiences to shape new ones!
this blog post is a little shorter this week! i have been INCREDIBLY busy, but new things are coming to the blog next week, very interesting things to be discussed!
-hunter
