BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Performance anxiety is an issue all-too-familiar to those who build their careers on the stage. And for many classical musicians, it can be a debilitating part of the job — triggering the flight or fight response (so everyone can watch you shaking, sweating, or licking your dried-out lips as you perform live).
But what if you’re performing for an audience that isn’t staring right at you while you give it your best? Might the issue of performance anxiety go away entirely?
This is the topic we’re exploring with Jack Schiller. The bassoonist is still pursuing his live performance career during COVID-19 lockdowns, but has taken to the stages that permit only a digital audience: Jack has performed live streamed concerts with the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. (This means all the members of his audience are sitting at home, sipping a glass of wine as they watch him from their laptops.)
So this leaves us wondering, what’s it feel like to play when everybody’s watching, but you can’t see a single pair of eyes among your audience?
Jack, it’s lovely to interview you. Last time you spoke to CutCommon back in 2017, you were performing as the only bassoonist of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music! Travelling to a beautiful town to perform at a live concert certainly seems like a distant memory, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it does feel like we’re living in a totally different time for the arts. But hopefully, we’ll get back to performing in amazing locations and venues before too long. It’s been a strange time. There’s been a lot of time for reflection.
Despite COVID-19, you’ve been able to engage in the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall, which has shifted Australia’s appetite for live music and placed it in the digital sphere. How did you get involved? And also, why did you want to perform a live streamed concert, as opposed to waiting for live performances to open up again?
MDCH co-founders Chris Howlett and Adele Schonhardt came up with this fantastic idea to present the ‘faces of the orchestra’, and put it to the members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra if we’d like to play a concert on this new platform. I jumped at the prospect of playing a concert, and happen to live with a cellist who also happens to be my partner. So we thought it would be a great opportunity to play some repertoire together.
I’d like to ask you a bit about the differences between performing live and online. We’ve heard a lot about the new opportunities for musicians, but not so much about getting inside your head to know what it feels like to perform in these new environments. What expectations did you have about live streaming, back when you were preparing for your first streamed performance?
I think my first live streamed performance was actually the third performance MSO did of Scheherazade in March 2020. It was meant to be to a [live and physical] audience, but the lockdown rules for large gatherings came into place over the weekend so we performed without the audience.
There really wasn’t much time to think about it. However, the uncertainty around that situation was quite unnerving.
How did it feel to prepare for a live performance – but then have no physical audience attend?
In the actual moment of performing for live stream, it is quite an interesting mix of emotions. I still get the hit of adrenaline from playing a concert, however the energy you can pick up from an audience is obviously not there. So it really is all about just making music with the other people on stage with you.
Occasionally, you remember ‘oh, so-and-so said they’d be watching’. But it sort of is just a fleeting thought.
Let’s divert for a moment. Tell me about your experience with performance anxiety as a musician.
I think performance anxiety is something all performers go through. For me, it generally manifests itself as sweaty palms and a dry mouth.
When you are performing all the time, like we normally are in orchestra, it can feel quite random when nerves really kick in. I just try to go with them and hope they add to the excitement of the performance.
Of course, there are times when they limit your abilities – and that can be tricky to navigate. But that’s part of the deal with performance. You’re exposing yourself, in a way, and making yourself vulnerable. I think that’s one of the reasons we love live performances so much.
When you’re performing for a live stream, would you say the issue of performance anxiety is eliminated, because of the absence of a live audience? Or is it more nerve-wracking to know people are watching you from inside their homes – relaxed and inside their comfort zones (while you’re far away from your own)?
Having an audience at home actually created an amazing group of people, from colleagues to family, who can’t normally come to our concerts. So it was actually just a joy.
What difference does it make not to be able to see the live reaction, response, or simply ‘vibe’ from an audience during your performance? For instance, does it make you question how you’re going, or does it force you to truly trust yourself in every moment?
The biggest difference performing without the audience is after everything is over: no applause, no hugs from people who came to see you. Everything is virtual at the moment, so there were lots of congratulatory texts. But that instant feeling of having shared something with an audience is lost.
When considering performance anxiety, we always think of an audience as the cause. So what has live streaming taught you about this very concept of performance anxiety?
I think that it has really confirmed to me that although certain people or an occasion can make you nervous, the real reasons are the expectations we place on ourselves.
Excuse the imagery, but I have to ask: the old piece of advice to “imagine your audience in their underwear” takes on a whole new meaning when people can watch in exactly that way! Do you care that they’re not wearing their evening gowns and suits? Is this a marker that we can listen to music for music’s sake and dispense with the formalities? (Obviously there will be some clothing still involved when we get back in the concert halls one day…)
I’ve personally never minded what people wear to any concert. Some people want to be comfortable, others want to dress up for the occasion. I’d say I’m normally on the comfortable end of the spectrum.
What piece of advice are you giving yourself to smash through your next live stream with confidence?
Like with any concert, just enjoy making music.
Watch Jack Schiller in the Melbourne Digital Concert Hall’s Aquilina Gala Series Concert 3 this June 20.
Want to know who Aquilina is? Read our interview with the arts hero behind this series of events.
Images supplied. MDCH captured by Albert Comper.
