TOMORROW’S THE DAY. I’m giving a recital! Of music for bassoon! And sometimes piano! Some of which I wrote! And it’s open to the public and I have heard Reasonably Authoritative Rumors that there might be Real Actual People there! Which is very exciting! And also very nerve-wracking!

And yet, despite the fact that I can already feel the jangle and buzz of pre-performance anxiety, I’m pretty confident that come 3:00 tomorrow, I’m going to be fine. 

It’s all about the head game. Much of my thinking on this can be traced back to Jeff Nelsen, who gave several master classes on performance anxiety when I was at the BU Tanglewood Institute Bassoon Workshop in 2009, but over the years of living it in my own performing life, I’ve added my own wrinkles and drifted into ways of preparing that work for me. (I’ve also picked up a few handy shakes from the Bulletproof Musician blog, which I highly recommend following if you’re a performer yourself.) The core of it is this:

Nothing can go wrong on stage.