As I mentioned in my vision statement, I had terrible stage fright when I first started performing again in 2006. I started reading books on handling anxiety, and making notes on my own experience. I like to share with you my “inventory of techniques” that you may find helpful. I know it[...]
Archive for the ‘Stage Fright’ Category
Performing While Unthinking
After five years of experimentation, I believe I finally found a reliable way to perform with confidence that works for me. If you like to read in details my experimentation during past five years, check out this article “Dealing with Stage Fright” which contains a long list of strategi[...]
May 30th, 2008 - 9:54 am § in Stage Fright, View all journals ...
The State of “Being”
Below are quotations from two works that I find best illuminate the ideal state of mind during a musical performance. From Umberto Eco’s novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana: I started humming a tune to myself. It was automatic, like brushing my teeth… but once I began thinking abou[...]
Preparing for Oct 18 - My Epic Struggle!
The concert featured a jazz trio, classical vocal works, and piano solo of classical repertoire. I performed Alexina Louie’s Fastforward, selections from Scriabin’s Preludes Op 11, and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1. . My epic struggle Preparing for the Oct 18 performance was a str[...]
March 28th, 2008 - 4:43 pm § in About Ricker, Performance Journal, Stage Fright, View all journals ...
7 Lessons Learnt-Washington International Piano Artists Competition
I competed in the 2008 Washington International Piano Artists Competition, and was awarded 3rd Prize, the Press Jury Award, and Best Performance of a Romantic Work Award. It was an amazingly intense and nerve wrecking experience. Being my first time competing in this type of competition and highly [...]
February 3rd, 2008 - 8:59 pm § in Stage Fright, View all journals ...
Trust Yourself, use The Force!
Remember the scene in Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope - when Luke Skywalker was blind-folded in a training session to use ‘The Force’, fending himself against lasers shot from a training pod? He kept second guessing himself, and was hit multiple times by the lasers. At the end of [...]
I Can’t Hear Myself at Markham Theatre!
Tonight I performed at Markham Theatre. Even though tonight was my 3rd time performing there, I still couldn’t adjust to its acoustics. I still recall my 1st performance at Markham Theatre was in 1992, in which I played Liszt’s Rigoletto Paraphrase and Prokofiev Sonata No. 3. I still rem[...]
November 30th, 2007 - 4:29 pm § in Stage Fright, View all journals ...
Ipod Fights Stage Fright
In the past, during the day when I had a performance, I would run through my program as many as 10 times! I was obsessed with testing my ability to run through the program. Only then I became confident that I would be able to perform just as well that night in the real performance. Then [...][...]
Is memory lapse really memory lapse?
I was performing Beethoven Op. 109, and when I got to 3rd movement, in one of the variation, a thought suddenly occur out of the blue: mmm… it was dominant 9th chord of E major, and which leads to the E major chord. This was so irrelevant to my performance! Why did it pop up out of [...][...]
Music is not about ‘me’, but ‘us’!
When I started performing again in 2006, I lost all the confidence I had when I was a teenager. I constantly worried about playing wrong notes, or that my performance is not ‘perfect’ enough: Ops did they hear that wrong note? O gosh this sound so bad! How am I going to get through this?[...]
