Jonathon Cunningham

Whether it was toasting your best friend at their wedding or baring your soul to a room full of strangers with a song you just wrote, we’ve all experienced that gut wrenching fear of getting up in front of a crowd and blowing a performance. Stage fright. Also known as “performance anxiety.”  The very mention of it is enough to get some of you queasy.

And you’re not alone.
Some studies have shown that as many as 65% of Americans would  rather die than speak in front of a crowd. Talk about stage fright!

Now chances are that if you’re a performing artist reading this you probably can’t identify with that side of the population. But even the most experienced performers still have to overcome stage fright at some points throughout his/her career.

So wouldn’t it be nice as an artist/performer to take control of stage fright and put it away so you can focus on the performance at hand to blow the crowd away, every time?

Enter Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner. Usually I’m not a big fan of books that go after deep “built in” emotional responses but this Effortless Mastery addresses what I believe is the core issue behind every case of stage fright - Performance anxiety is based entirely on a single fallacy: The existence of stage fright is built on the thought that the conscious mind can dwell in more than one place at a time.
It cannot.
When performers allow their minds to weigh in on what may or may not happen next, they sacrifice their presence in the performance moment.

Instead of experiencing the act of true artistic creation, performers choose to concentrate on the fiction surrounding the performance. A sound is neither good nor bad, and yet, musicians throw away creative opportunities by assessing the value of the notes they play. Until a performer realizes this, he/she is destined to allow these lies to control their performances. Once a performer realizes this truth, they can apply true creativity to the act of music making. It’s the difference between thought and instinct.

The book has many more tools for musicians such as The Space: “There is a place inside each of us where perfection exists… All the creative possibilities of the universe are to be found there.” -Kenny Werner

All in all this is a great tool for every musician/performing artist to have in their tool belt.

Pick up Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner from Amazon below:
http://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-Master-Musician/dp/156224003X