Potential for Errors Provides a Potential for Brilliance, too. A Student Recital Debrief

On September 28th I held my studio’s first ever in-person recital. And it was a beautiful event! I was so proud of what my students had achieved over the time they spent learning with me. Each and every one of them put their best foot forward and stayed to cheer each other on - it truly made me emotional.

I said this to my students the week before the performance:

This in person jam session serves many purposes. It is meant to give you all a platform to understand what performance experience is in a safe space with people who are there to cheer you and your progress. It is a community event, so you can see all the people who are working on their art just like you! 

What it is not, is a place to be perfect. It is a place to do your best, make mistakes, laugh at those mistakes and then learn from them. Some people are presenting works in progress, some people are presenting full pieces, some are presenting parts of pieces, some are even improvising! 

Why?

Because, fundamentally, performance should come from a place of joy and freedom. It should come from a sense of excitement about sharing your art. And it should come with the potential for brilliance. Oftentimes we are told “oh, you cannot make mistakes on stage” and that it’s a “big deal”. This sets the stage (no pun intended!) for performance anxiety, stage fright and stagnation in your art for the fear of making errors on stage. I speak from experience. 

Concert seasons in Chennai were always a high pressure event for me. I would just feel my guru’s voice in my head and the music critic’s words would run flash in front of my eyes. I felt that if I even made a single error on stage, my life would be over. So my improvisations were good, because I practiced hard, but the moments of “ooh, that was an interesting phrase!” that I had at home, would somehow be missing on stage. I would limit myself because, “better safe than sorry”. But art is never better safe than sorry!

One concert season in Chennai several years ago I decided to try something else. I repeated to myself, “I give myself the freedom to make mistakes on stage”, over and over again. And, you know what? I did make a rather large mistake on stage. I slipped from one raga Sarasangi to another, Mayamalavagowla for a single moment, while I had my eyes closed and was letting the alapana (improvisation) out of its shackles. Yes, it was a pretty major mistake, a mistake a professional typically should not make, but the Sarasangi I sang that day, was the best one I had ever sung until that point. I explored it in a way I had never explored it before and found new facets to it which then may have opened the door to the raga multiverse a little too widely. 

I repeat, allowing the potential for errors allows the potential for brilliance, too. 

It also allows you to realise mistakes are not that big a deal. So you sang a wrong note. Big deal. Okay so you forgot a line, big deal. Mistakes are a part and parcel of live performances, and if we dwell on them too much, our sympathetic nervous system goes on overdrive, we panic, more mistakes happen, and then we habituate that nervous system response everytime we sit on stage. 

Performance anxiety is something several singers go through to varying degrees regardless of their level of experience. I suffer from it. Blood pumping in my ears, breathing shifts, losing my low range. And guess what? It’s okay! It’s a part of putting yourself out there. And recognising that helps lower its impact on you in the moment. 

But what I wanted singers to realise through this student recital is that performance can come from a place of low pressure, community support and joy. And these are some of the quotes from those students:

“Thank you for giving us a chance to perform and for fostering a safe space to do so.”

“…in a room filled with the warm and supportive community she has built through her music.”

And the words that continue to resonate the most about the recital were:

“joy” “support”, “safe space”, “warmth”, “excited”, “brave”, “happy”

And there were definitely nerves about, including for myself! But the fact that these words could be used in a performance space makes me feel like I accomplished what I wanted to and gave my students a platform to share their art from a place of joy and continue to grow into their own selves as artists from there.