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Barrier Busting
The Barrier Busting podcast offers insights, strategies, and inspiring stories that explore practical tips and powerful tools for unlocking our full potential.
Barrier Busting
Strategies for Stress-Free Performances
Are you feeling stuck, trapped by barriers holding you back from reaching your full potential? Well, let's bust through those barriers so that you can live your best life. Hi, I'm Matt Brooks, founder of Matt Brooks Coaching, and I'm passionate about helping people overcome barriers to achieve success. Join me for insights, strategies and inspiring stories as we explore practical tips and powerful tools to unlock your true potential. This is the Barrier Busting Podcast. Okay, everybody, welcome back.
Speaker 1:I am very happy to have my guest from last week back this week, if you weren't listening. My guest is Dr Jean-Ron LaFond. He spent his life in the opera and theater world. He was an opera singer and now is a teacher all over the world. I'll read what his background is. He's also we call him Ron, those of us who know him, but he has both a master's and doctorate from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree from the famous Westminster Choir College.
Speaker 1:Having performed over 40 operatic roles as a baritone and given at least as many performances of oratorio solos, he has also presented over 400 recitals. In his prestigious career, he's worked as a stage director and also as an experienced theater actor. Throughout his career as a performer, dr Lafon maintained a strong presence as a teacher and mentor. He has taught at the University of Florida, east Carolina University, the University of Delaware and Westminster Choir College. Ron currently works as a freelance teacher, regularly presenting masterclasses all over the world, as well as private study all over the world, and he's developed his own philosophy for teaching singers that incorporates principles from both vocal science and martial arts, which I think is really fascinating. Ron, welcome back to the show. It's good to have you again. Thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man Pleasure.
Speaker 1:We were talking about the root causes of performance anxiety the last time, and I want to take that to another level in terms now of coping mechanisms and strategies for coping with performance anxiety, and I want to remind the listeners that my first show of this series was on performance anxiety in general, the kind we all feel. You don't have to be a professional performer to experience this. You might need to give a toast at a wedding or give a presentation at work or church or something, and you suddenly go through performance anxiety. If you listen to the first episode I did on this, there's a bunch of tips as to how to deal with that, but we're going to talk more. We've been talking about how professional performers deal with it, because I think there's a lot to learn from that.
Speaker 1:So, ron, let's. We talked about performance anxiety and how it, you know, comes up, and a lot of times it's this what you called, in tennis, scar tissue, which is really memories of when things went wrong, and I mentioned that anxiety is often caused by fear of anxiety. That's pretty common. What strategies do you recommend for your students for managing performance anxiety before stepping out on stage? And then we'll come back to the same question and talk about it before stepping out on the tennis court, because, I should mention for anybody who didn't listen last week, ron is also a lifelong, serious tennis player, like a real, the real deal, and so he can speak both from the musical perspective and the performing arts perspective and the sports perspective. So again, ron, what strategies do you recommend for managing performance anxiety before stepping on stage?
Speaker 2:Just like anything else, preparation is the most important thing. You have to know your material backwards and forwards such that you can be in a place where, if things go a little bit awry which they often do you have the presence of mind to be able to adapt.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like a muscle memory, right. It's kind of like if you're really well prepared. I talked about this in my show. You create a kind of muscle memory that will save your butt in those moments. Right, that's it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm working with a tenor right now on a role that's coming up, very difficult role, and we've spent the last year and a half working on this role because it's a role that is a bit beyond what is done up to this point. I received a text message from him just today where he said, quote where is it? Yeah, I'm feeling way more confident for next week, which is something else he has to do. Yeah, he said it in a very wonderful way that he's, that he's been thinking about something. And where did he say yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2:I've been doing uh, I've done this. I tested a little bit today anyway, just to see the contemplating I've been doing about separating head and chest voices. But this specific has marinated and the idea is that he's been thinking about these concepts that we've been talking about, thinking about them, just imagining them just in his thoughts how does it feel to feel the separation of these two elements? And he said he was wondering if those thoughts had marinated into actual physical experience. And he sang and he sent me a couple of uh recordings and it's extraordinary the growth that he's made. He's made that step into a feeling like, okay, my body has absorbed this now.
Speaker 3:Isn't that wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's incredible, I mean, and for this to work, I mean, this is a thing I've worked with for 14 years and we have this back and forth going on where it's his process that I'm guiding him through. But we have this back and forth and so that sensation of it's internalized, it's physically, uh, muscle memory now. So and that means that the act of singing is physical memory, the act of moving on stage, of acting, is physical memory. The, the music itself is, is, is physical memory. The text, the expression, all of that is already prepared. Great singers do that. They are absolutely perfectly prepared, because when they go in they're going to meet with other elements and then they have to be able to navigate that. So they cannot be worried about whether or not their voices can do the job. They can't be worried about whether or not their memory of the text is a problem.
Speaker 1:So, first and foremost, preparation yeah, I had a friend in classical music say to me that the thing is, you never know what's going to happen on stage. No matter how well everybody's prepared, things happen in the audience that you can't expect and they may throw you. And so being fully prepared isn't just about overcoming anxiety, it's being able to handle the unexpected in the moment. Is that right? Has that been your experience?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, man. I could tell you stories of things that went totally wrong on stage, but you find a way to make it work. The audience doesn't know. But when you go backstage and you and your colleagues are laughing your asses off because it's like how did we get through that moment? Right, Right, but that's because what you were supposed to do on stage was so worked out between you all that when something went way off, we were able to figure out a way to get out of that problem in the moment, All right let's shift to tennis, because you made the point last week that I think is really important.
Speaker 1:The tennis we're talking about it's a solo thing. It's like a soloist you're on your own out there and what. I'm sure there's similar uh issues in terms of being well prepared, but there's other things that can come into one's head before stepping out onto a court in a match. What, what strategies do you recommend for for people playing tennis? To you know, get themselves calm and focused if they're experiencing anxiety before a match.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to have a very clear idea of what you're doing, what the process is. When you walk into a tennis court, you and your opponent walk out. You have a few minutes where you warm up together. Right, this is the moment that you get yourself in preparation mode because you heading back and forth with with uh, your opponent. It's, it's. It's a moment where you're getting information about how this person hits the ball. Uh, what are the tendencies? You practice volleys. How do they volley? Is the backhand good? Is the forehand? All of this stuff is information.
Speaker 2:So, instead of being nervous, you have tasks, very specific tasks. Oh, interesting, keep you focused. So, during this entire time, that keep you focused, okay. So I'm hitting the ball back and forth. If I'm empty-minded, what's going to happen? I'm going to fill my mind with oh, this guy hits a pretty good forehand. What am I going to do about that? Or maybe he's going to kill me. That happened to me in one match where I avoid this guy's forehand and it wasn't even that strong a forehand because I was told he had a good forehand and I ended up losing that match and I shouldn't have.
Speaker 3:This is a match I should have won.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I never did that again. So the thing is that if somebody has a hand there, let's see what it does right. It may be strong, but is it consistent?
Speaker 1:so this is a version. This is a version of being present in the moment, which is one of the tips that I gave in my show clearing your mind out and you know. What are you seeing right now, what are you hearing right now, what are you feeling right now, what is in the moment?
Speaker 2:to get out of your head, that's exactly what you're saying here, right?
Speaker 2:that's how you prepare, because the thing is that your game is one thing, but your game has to adapt to somebody else's game the person you're going to play with so you use that time to get information. So now, when you go to your seat just before you're going to hit your first serve or the other guys are going to hit their first serve, you already have a strategy right, and so I've seen how this guy hit his point in backhand. I think that's his weak side, so I'm going to test that. Maybe for the first game you play, the guy proves you wrong. Okay, maybe it's the other way around.
Speaker 1:Let's try this a match is, in other words, you're very focused on what you're doing at the moment and that in and of itself is is pushing the bugaboos away. Right?
Speaker 2:That's right, because yeah, because if you're in the moment and you have tasks, right, that's being like oh, I was talking about his backhand. It's pretty strong. Maybe I should try this one. That's something that you're planning to do, as opposed to oh my God, what am I going to do about this guy's backhand? It's much better than I thought you see. So you're taking information and you're processing it. You might lose the first set and end up winning the match pretty easily, because you're taking information and it's a martial arts technique. The great martial artists used to say whenever I face an opponent, I always lose the first time because I'm taking information about how this person fights.
Speaker 1:Interesting, but either way, however you're doing this. I think this applies to any situation where you might feel performance anxiety. Be present in the moment. Find focus on what your task is. It's going to help you get your brain cleared out and empty that mind. So, that's really important. Now. As for opera singers, I know that they have to do all kinds of warm-ups to get their voice in shape before they perform. Are there any specific warm-up techniques that you tell your students to do that will help them calm nerves.
Speaker 2:We always begin with breathing, first and foremost, we do breathing exercises. Become conscious of your breath, right. So you breathe in, you breathe out, that's all there is One. Breathe in, breathe out. One Breathe in, breathe out.
Speaker 1:It's not two, three, four, it's just being conscious of how your body is moving Now let me ask you, because I talk about breathing in my thing about breathing in through the nose and out through the lips. You know we often make fun of that, but there's a reason for that, because breathing in through your nose kind of forces you naturally to breathe from the diaphragm rather than the lungs, which gets more oxygen in your body.
Speaker 1:Is that what you're doing with them? Are they breathing in through the nose? I mean, singers know how to get to their diaphragm easier than most people, so how do you have them breathe?
Speaker 2:There are different mindsets about that. There are moments where you don't have enough time to breathe through your nose, that you have to breathe through your mouth, especially in a very quick breath and a very fast music, for example. But in general, when you can, yes, breathe through your nose, and there are lots of reasons for that yes, just the resistance of the airstream from the air passage of the nose, which is tighter, creates an increase in how the diaphragm works to have air come in. So your body engages much more strongly Like sometimes I have a singer do this which is another way of getting the whole process of the entire body engaging to get air in All right.
Speaker 1:So let's shift to tennis then. Before a match, I imagine there's some breathing involved too, but what other techniques do you recommend to tennis players to stay calm before they have to go out into the storm?
Speaker 2:Right, so we started with. Okay. So then you are about to step into the court. Hopefully you've taken some time to warm up before your time to warm up with your opponent, because that's different. You need to be in shape for what the match begins.
Speaker 2:When it's such a warm up right, strategy, mentality, how you greet your opponent, all of these kinds of things work into the match, right, and I often say, after you've done the exercises that you need to do to get your body prepared, that you warmed up, you've stretched, you've hit a few balls, whatever breathing I take that from Djokovic and it's extremely important.
Speaker 2:I say sit down for a second, close your eyes and just breathe in, breathe out, and see what it feels like to be really calm, because the hardest part about tennis is when you have, for example, a long rally, you between you and your partner, you get 42 balls, you're running around and as you're running, you're gradually hyperventilating, right, so you need to find a way to take air in to prevent yourself from losing oxygen in the brain. That way, you stay clear and you stay focused on what you're doing. Most of what you're doing is going to be almost reactionary, right, the thing is going so quickly that you're going to make the right choices and tactics. If you are breathing and your brain has enough oxygen, it's that simple, so that's why breathing is so crucial.
Speaker 1:Now you were talking a minute about, you know, getting your focus on the moment and so you're not focusing on your nerves and all that. But let's take that same idea in terms of turning fear, turning away from fear and making enjoyment, because I think we're you know, it seems we're better, you're be better, you're better opera singer, better tennis player if you're having fun doing it and it's not like it's not like a oppressive, you know thing you've got to constantly work through.
Speaker 1:So, in that same vein of how to clear your mind and focus on being in the moment, how do you shift your focus from fear towards enjoyment?
Speaker 2:That's a very great question. I wish I had the perfect answer for that, but it's memory. It's a memory of what it feels like to enjoy the game. I mean, I play pretty much every day with friends and I enjoy it. And my best tennis is when I'm playing with my friends. I mean, I've played with a 27-year-old who was a young professional and we end up splitting sets. I'm 59 years old and the kid asked me how old are you? He couldn't believe that I was as old, as I was running around the world, but I was just having fun. But then I went to a tournament not too long after. I started to concentrate on winning the match and I ended up losing Right.
Speaker 2:So what I've learned from that is that match at home with my friends or a match in a tournament, if I'm not having fun, it's not worth it, because the pros tell you the same thing. If they're having a good time out there, they tend to make the right choice, so it seems backwards, but if you want to win the match, you're concentrating on winning the match. Concentration, just enjoying the point. You know, the most famous player in the world right now is this young spanish guy named carlos alcaraz uh, who has the biggest smile on his face all the time, and everybody loves him because he smiles, because he's trying to enjoy it. If he has a day when he's not enjoying it, it's visible like it's kind of serious. We know he's gonna lose, you know, and it's really much that is. Don't forget why you're doing this.
Speaker 2:Professional singers or tennis players go through the same exact thing. They're kind of such a well, you know, I have to win this match because that's my salary for this week, that's my salary, that's how I'm going to pay my coach. And they are very specific and it's not very different. I had my first voice lesson and my first tennis lesson the same day. I was 15. And so those two things have been fused for a long time and I didn't know why, but they're so similar in a way.
Speaker 2:You know, top opera singers are few. The very top people are few, and they're going to be millionaires. They're going to make lots of money. Don't worry about that so much. They can try to enjoy, you know, as much as they can. But they have their problems too. There's expectation and all that, but the people under that top layer, they have to make a living and there are people now who are taking three buses to get to a tournament, you know, just to make money for this week to pay the rent. We don't know that side of professional tennis and that breeds anxiety. Those players who are playing what are called challenges. If you haven't seen the movie with Zendaya, which is a very interesting movie, quite true to life, you know these people who are like number 1,000 in the world and they're professional and they're playing these lower tournaments, who just pay the rent, you know you know yeah same thing in professional golf.
Speaker 1:I knew a couple guys who are? In professional golf who didn't make it but were in it for years, and that's a tough life man. They didn't make a lot of money and they're staying in the worst hotels, you know, yeah, yeah exactly the same.
Speaker 2:and then you have to go play against somebody you know staying in a luxury hotel who's got three coaches, a physio and all kinds of stuff, and you don't. You're traveling alone.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, the thing happens to a singer who is presenting themselves to an audition or going to do a gig and they have a day job for eight hours and then they have to take, you know, two trains and a bus and a taxi to get to this gig. They arrive, and a bus and a taxi to get to this gig. They arrive, they're tired. Meanwhile their colleagues who are singing in this gig are at a higher echelon and they look like they're having the best time of their lives. So all of these things play into the singer's mind, or the musician's mind, or the actor's mind or whatever, or the executive or the secretary.
Speaker 1:You know there is expectation, yeah, and I think what you're you know there is expectation, yeah, and I think what you're saying is that there is, and it's interesting you bring this up, because stress and anxiety that might be you might think of it as performance Anxiety can also come from other places, other other elements in your life. We're going to talk, we're going to take a quick break and that's going to be a great place to pick up, because I want to talk about how we deal with anxiety on a daily basis, or what things we can do on a daily basis that will add to our armor against anxiety when it really kicks in. So we're going to do that in just a minute, but first a quick break. Hang tight, a quick break.
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Speaker 1:Okay. So right before the break, Dr LaFond brought up an interesting issue about outside stressors that affect you in your performance, and anybody in any job really. But you know, since we're focusing on performance anxiety, specifically these outside stressors and I talked about this in my first show on this topic and I've talked about it in other shows on other topics that we do have some things we can do daily that we can incorporate regularly into our life, our lives, that help us uh, you know, fight against overwhelming stress and anxiety when it kicks in. And of course I talked about everybody's sick of hearing it. But exercise, sleep and healthy diet right, Everybody's sick of hearing that because we say that with everything, but there's a reason, because those things really make a difference. I find if I'm exercising regularly, I sleep better. You know what I mean. And if I eat more healthy, I feel better when I'm exercising. I mean, it's a cycle, right, it's a circle, it's a cycle, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Aside from exercise and sleep and good diet, which we talk about all the time, are there specific daily habits or routines that you recommend to your students to manage anxiety, in terms of a consistent way to manage it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean one of the ways that I deal with things, because I mean being essentially a professional voice teacher. I find myself in the flow of voice teaching. I've been doing it for about 40 years now, from teaching very young people to teaching top professionals, and I've gotten to a point where it's very hard for me to remember in the last couple of years when I've had a bad voice lesson. Right, because it's something I know really well and I interact with new students in a way much better now than I did before. So that's a flow. So one of the things that takes stress out of me is the lessons I teach. That's one, but that's not gonna help a lot of people. What I find helps a lot is something that I've been doing since I started martial arts personally. For me is Tai Chi meditation. So a Tai Chi meditation can be done still, or it can be done in movement. That's for me, that's something that I do. If you're interested in that, you can go and find a wonderful Tai Chi Kung Fu teacher. I know a few.
Speaker 1:And I mentioned in my show. One of the tips was meditation, and it's not something that I'm into, but a lot of people I know that are into it. The one thing that I can say seems to be a common thread is that they're pretty calm in general. People that do meditation on a daily basis have a certain calmness to them in general. So, yeah, I think that's a really potent tool for fighting anxiety, right, and there are different kinds of meditation.
Speaker 2:I mentioned touch meditation. That's for me because that's something I do, that's something I practice, right? I find tennis to be meditative because I enjoy it so much and I don't put any stress on it. I've stopped stressing myself about the tournament, but with the tournament it's about meeting new people, having fun, so I've taken the stresses off. I play better at tournaments now, so it can be anything. It can be absolutely anything that you enjoy. Some people run.
Speaker 2:I live not very far away from the sea. One of the ways I meditate, when I don't do necessarily Tachi meditation, I take a walk by the sea. Like you said, I was born by the beach. I'm pretty much the same distance from the beach right now than I was when I was a kid in Haiti. It's literally a 10 minute walk and I'm in front of the Mediterranean. Nice and that nothing calls me, calms me more than that. Right, so that's a meditation in itself. I go to the tennis court via my walk in front of the ocean and then, when I arrive at the club, I am ready to have a good time, you know. So there are so many ways. The other thing I'd say and again from life experience. I guess. Get rid of anything that you don't need in your life that causes you stress right Like what?
Speaker 1:Can you give us an example?
Speaker 2:Oh sure, it can be someone who claims to be your friend but gives you more stress than they give you good feelings. Right, Life is about the processing of energy and you have to surround yourself with elements that fill your day. And it may sound a bit selfish, but it's not. You know, we tend to.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. No, I was going to say what a brilliant thing to say. Life is about the process of energy. That's what you just said. I've never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2:That's wow, I gotta, I'm gonna folks think on that one. I'm gonna think on it too, because that's brilliant. We often hold on to things because we think they're absolutely necessary. You know, I'll give you a very simple example radical. I've been on Facebook since it came out in 2004. So that's 20 years. I've had my business profile based on Facebook. I've met friends on Facebook that I haven't seen forever. So Facebook became this thing that I felt was just a part of my life.
Speaker 2:But over the past few months I realized that Facebook has been causing me more stress than anything, because it's an environment where you're not necessarily going to find yourself having good debates with people. Like you know, I can sit down with somebody who has a completely different political point of view than me. We communicate, we express our differences and while we're having a beer together you know it's not a big deal, we're not going to agree on every single thing, but you can have that talk and hopefully, at the end of a debate like that, you both come out a little bit more informed. And it depends on your friendship. I have friends who are diametrically opposed to me in terms of politics, but we're really friends. I don't get rid of those people because I know I can have a talk with them and we come out learning. But I came to realize that Facebook was a very stressful energy in my life and I thought, well, okay, goodbye Facebook. So I have deleted my Facebook account.
Speaker 1:I did this a year ago and I want to tell you you're going to be really happy about that. I mean, I'm back on social media because I have my coaching business now and and it's a great way to communicate with people, but I got back on reluctantly because I did get. I found the exact same experience from Facebook. It was great for me to connect with old friends, uh, but it got to a point where it was just too stressful, and I think social media in general has empowered people to be able to speak up in ways they couldn't before. But unfortunately, the darker sides of human nature has caused social media to create a lot of angry people who can quietly sit in their house and say the kind of shit you would never say to somebody to their face, and it can be. It's very destructive and I think we know we all know this we all know why.
Speaker 1:I don't even know why we still debate this. We all know this and I wish we could just calm that, ramp that down.
Speaker 1:But I think it's Absolutely, but some people feel empowered by having a platform of some kind even though there's a bunch of people that Well, but I think your point here, which is the one to really drill home, is that if you're gonna incorporate daily routines into your life that you're doing consciously to help you handle stress and anxiety better, shed the things that are causing stress. Shed the things you can shed that are causing. There's always going to be some things that cause stress that you still have to deal with. But you can take an inventory of your life. You can sit back, spend a half an hour, an hour, and think through what's unnecessary but giving me a lot of stress and shed it. I think that's really superb advice. Let's go to your personal anecdotes, because I told you I wanted to hear if you had any personal anecdotes or lessons from your own experience with performance anxiety. You've given a few, but I'm wondering if you have any more that you want to share.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to tell you one that is pretty fun. I kind of alluded to it. I did a production of Tosca a few years ago when I was in Sweden and I was supposed to sing the tenor role, because I transitioned to tenor about 15 years ago, as you know, and it was the first time I was doing this role, and it's a tough one. It's one that requires great strength and stuff that I was building up to. But I was putting the work in and this was for this little festival that I ran over there and I had invited a colleague to come and direct the show. I had this baritone from the Met that I worked with years ago to come and do this show with us, and so rehearsals were set and everything, and the director that I had engaged wrote to me two days before we started rehearsals and told me that he was at this other festival and he did a vacation, so he wasn't going to be able to arrive for another week and a half, so I had to direct the show myself, uh, thinking that when the guy comes in I'd have the bare bones set up, then he'd take over from there. But he arrived and said well, you've done a pretty good job. I don't want to interfere with what you're doing. You don't need me. The thing became a very stressful situation where I was directing the show, running the festival and singing the lead tenor role oh man, the role that I was doing for the first time.
Speaker 2:So there are so many stories that happened with Tosca I. There are so many stories that happened with Tosca. There's a whole book of anecdotes that happened in Tosca that will make you laugh from now until next week. Well, there's a point in the show in the second act, when my character comes in, has a confrontation with the baritone and then he's taken out of the room to be tortured by two people. Well, these two guys were not singers, they were extras whose jobs were basically they show up on stage at a certain time and they'd take me off at a certain time. Well, those guys decided to go off at some point before I'm supposed to be taken off. They just walked off stage.
Speaker 2:So now I'm on stage, I'm supposed to be taken off and we're trying to figure out how I get off stage to be tortured. So I did this. I got totally panicked. That was about half a minute there and I'm thinking like oh my God, what am I going to do? And the baritone, who knows the show as well as looking at me? Dude, what's going to happen? So what happened is that I jumped at the baritone, who is the villain, and I grabbed him by the scruff of his costume and kind of pushed and pulled against him and I forced myself to fall on the ground. And there's this general chaos on stage. The soprano's running around trying to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile I'm crawling off stage while the music but ended up in the torture room anyway.
Speaker 2:But it was a bizarre.
Speaker 1:Did that affect the rest of your performance that day?
Speaker 2:oh no, actually it could have, because in that moment, absolute panic Because I had no idea what was going to happen after that, because if I don't get off stage, the rest of the story doesn't work. I was just trying to figure out how to get myself off stage, but here's the thing the panic did happen. Absolute dread happened that moment. I was deer, in the headlights, I think, for about half a minute. All you can see me still on stage trying to figure out what to do. But because I was prepared, I figured out something absolutely nuts and crazy to do. The audience didn't figure it out. Maybe a few people who know the opera very well probably laughed a little bit in their programs because they knew something weird had happened over there. But I managed to get it off and we continued the performance and it went fine. But that was the woman of dread.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I bet in the performing arts. I can just imagine there's millions of stories like that.
Speaker 2:I have one more that is not as positive as that and it was just before I realized I was a tenor. It was a period when my voice started to crack a little bit. I was doing a performance of Traviata and I walked in for the first rehearsal and my entrance and my voice just went like that. You know I was supposed to sing. And it went entrance and my voice just went like that. You know I was supposed to sing madame jenna, love our lady. And he went. Madame jenna, love our lady, my voice just, oh man, the falsetto man.
Speaker 2:I laughed, you know, as I guys. I just came from the street. I have to go warm up a little bit. Everything will be fine. I spend the next few weeks keeping my voice from flipping out like that. Well, performances went fine. It never flipped in performance. And two weeks later I had a performance.
Speaker 2:A conductor, friend of mine, put a program together for me of stuff that I had done a lot Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs, duru Flair, requiem A program specifically for me. I walked into the first rehearsal and it's as if my throat was just tied in knots. I had no idea what happened. Oh boy, I admitted to the first rehearsal and it's as if my throat was just tied in knots. I had no idea what happened. Oh boy, I admitted to the rehearsal, said everything, and the conductor came to me and she said are you okay? You sound a little bit husky today. I said yeah, I don't know if it's allergies or something. You know.
Speaker 2:I got into the performance day the first night. I knew that one of my great mentors, great conductor from Westminster Choir College, a guy named Joseph Flummerfelt, was in the audience that day and so I wanted to do. Well, I literally the feeling was like I was on stage and flames just came up and I was just going to go down. That was the sensation. That's what you felt like. That's what I felt, like the whole performance was like. I stuck it out, I did the performance, I did what I could, but I felt horrible. I felt like my voice wasn't working, something was wrong. But if you look at my face you would know it, because I just was stoic, I just went through it, did everything, went off, took my applause which I can't even remember what it was, because all I could feel was flames Went to my dressing room, felt awful, because I know it wasn't a good performance, and this conductor came to me and she said you know, I adore you and that's why I put this program together for you, but something is not right with your voice.
Speaker 2:You should check it out. I've gotten somebody else to do the second show. I've never been fired from a show in my entire life. It was the first time ever, but I figured she was right. And then, two months later, I was warming up in France for a master class and it became very clear to me I was a tenor and that was a problem, and so anxiety at that point was because something was fundamentally wrong. I didn't know what it was, and that's what I meant. Very often you panic because something's happening wrong and you have no idea what it is. From one day to the next, you're doing great and then suddenly you have no idea what it is. From one day to the next, you're doing great, and then suddenly you have no.
Speaker 1:Just real quick in that instance. So you decide that you discovered that, that the anxiety came from the fact that you were no longer a baritone, you were a tenor, and you had to find that out. You know, through through, you know, almost tripping over it, basically, yeah. Did that, that experience, though being fired did that cause any scar tissue? What you've been talking about in terms of you know, memories that have affected you in future performances, or was just the realization that you're a tenor, not a baritone, enough to sweep that?
Speaker 2:away. That was enough, because that explained it. Then I realized, well, I didn't mess up, you know, it was just that. I mean, this is one of the hard things you know about being a singer is that voices are extremely complex things and you can spend a lifetime trying to figure out what is your nature, right? I mean, in classical singing, you're called a voice type, you're called a bass, you're called a baritone, you're called this Very often. You're trying everything you call the baritone, you call this very often. You're trying everything you can to fill those shoes, so you don't know that you're actually producing sounds that fulfill what you're told you are as opposed to discovering your true nature, and that's something that takes time and and schools often, uh, I mean I I think I had a teacher probably knew what I was, but didn't want to take the responsibility of going to that change because it's not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:I was being successful at baritone, so just leave it alone, right? Uh, I get that, but uh, and it did take me quite a long time to actually master my voice again as a tenor. I'm glad I did it. Uh, I didn't back away from it. I was like that's information. I am a tenor. I'm glad I did it. I didn't back away from it. That's information. I am a tenor, so that's what I'm going to do and I'm a very happy singer and I'm singing tenor now.
Speaker 1:He's a very happy singer everybody and I love hearing that. Ron, I can't thank you enough for these two episodes because I think you've given us a lot of information about how to confront performance anxiety, what to look for, what to think about doing, and I think all of the things you've said can transfer over to the person who's having performance anxiety because they got to give a toast at the wedding this weekend. You know all those things will help. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time to do these two shows. Coming all the way from Spain to do these, he didn't fly out. We're doing this over Zoom, but I want to thank you for that and I really wish you the best, ron. Thanks for being on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Same to you, my friend. I enjoy these interviews so much because you're such a natural at this. I feel like I'm being interviewed by Larry King or somebody. It flows so easily. That's not always the case.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that I've done tons of interviews and it's not all the time that you get somebody that you feel like you're in the flow, in the zone, as we say in tennis. Well, I really appreciate that and and you know, a lot of that, I think, comes from uh, as a coach, you know really learning how to listen. That's the key as a coach really being present and listening without thinking about what you're going to say next and all the stuff that we typically do as people. But that's really nice of you to say and I can't thank you enough. So, if you've enjoyed listening to the show, thank you all for tuning in. If you've enjoyed listening, please hit that subscribe or like button so that you can find out when I drop new episodes, and I've been saying this a lot lately.
Speaker 1:If you have an idea for a topic you'd like me to cover, I'd love to hear from you. Email me. It's matt at mattbrookscoachingcom. That's simple Matt at mattbrookscoachingcom and two Ts in Matt, by the way. But shoot me an idea. I'd love to hear from you and if it's something that I can pull off or feel good about, I will absolutely do it. So thanks for listening and please tune in. Next week I'm going to piggyback this series on performance anxiety, with one episode about fear of failure, because fear of fear of failure is very similar to performance anxiety. So that's what I'm going to do next week. Meanwhile, thanks again for listening. Be well, and I'll catch you next time on the Barrier Busting Podcast. Podcast.
