Learn to Embrace Your Audience
A basic problem for many musicians, Dutch cellist Rata Kloppenburg explains, is that they regard the audience as the enemy rather than as a group of cherished friends who have willingly come along for the musical ride. “Imagine that the music is a present you’re giving to the audience,” she says. “You want the present to be as beautiful as possible.”
Seducing the audience is an important part of your job as a performer, says Kloppenburg. When something goes “wrong” onstage, when your music stand topples over or your chair collapses, she explains, “it’s like a present from heaven. It gives you the opportunity to smile to the audience and say, ‘Oh, bad luck.’ And the tension is broken.
“The audience sees that it’s a human being there onstage!”
Of course, you can’t rely on an accident to help you connect with the audience. When entering the stage, there’s a simple routine Kloppenburg suggests to break the ice before you begin playing. She tells her students to stand in the place where they will play and greet the audience three times, saying hello first to a friendly face in the front row, then to someone in the middle of the hall, and finally to a particular audience member in the back.
Kloppenburg likens the successful stage performance to the engaging telling of a story. In her seminars, she has students pair off and tell a story to one another. Then they play a little piece for one another. When they’ve done that successfully, they can move on and play the piece for a larger group of people. She asks them to pay attention to how the experience is different, how they have to revise their presentation to include more people. It’s very much like acting coach Constantin Stanislavsky’s concept of “circles of attention.” Before you can successfully tell a story to a large audience, you must learn to tell it to yourself, to one other person, to a small group, and so on.
“It’s amazing what it does to people’s performances when they’re imagining this and playing their instruments,” she says.
By Simone Solondz
Whether you’re picking up your instrument for the first time or are a seasoned professional, you know that when it comes to playing a performance, nerves can often get the best of you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy having an audience.
Once you're in front of a group of listeners, all your hard work has finally paid off, and you can show it off!
But getting to that point can be difficult. Strings offers all the encouragement you need to continue taking every opportunity to play in front of others. Be inspired by your favorite players. You’ll find out they get anxious about playing too. Be prepared with technique tips from the experts. You’ll feel ready for anything once you’ve mastered the skills that make playing natural and effortless.
yeah i think quite often musicians forget we performing to people who need be entertained NOT given a technical demonstration like one would to a room of students ...... so connecting , be it from eye contact, humour body language, is essential to let the audience know we performing this show with them in mind........
