Page 12 - How to Shine on Stage

warding. The key question on the road to music performance excellence
is how to channel the pre- performance excitement towards achieving a
state of flow instead of performance anxiety.
Classical music performers face the highest demands for excellence
in musical performance, followed by jazz musicians and then entertain-
ment music performers. The primary focus of the monograph is on clas-
sical musicians, since they face the greatest challenges and represent the
10 majority in the Slovenian music-education context. Musicians playing
all kinds of music genres, as well as other performers (athletes, speakers,
actors, etc.), can benefit from the useful information contained herein,
which can guide them towards their own optimal performances.
What makes a musician shine on stage, then? The search for an-
How to Shine on Stage swers to this question has been my main motivator in academic psychol-
ogy, and my interest was shaped by my experiences on stage. I enjoy
performing, but despite my basic hedonistic attitude toward it, I real-
ized at a young age that the degree of my enjoyment varied between
instruments (violin, piano, transverse flute, classical solo singing), and
that in certain performance situations I experienced a higher degree of
pre- performance excitement. I also realized that the boundaries of West-
ern classical music were too rigid for me, and that I felt much more at
home in entertainment music. Although I focused on solo singing for
some time and had sung in choirs since childhood, what I enjoy most is
the vocal interplay in small vocal ensembles, where each singer still has
room for their own individuality, but also the opportunity to co-create
on stage. Diverse performance situations enabled me to grow experien-
tially, which was akin to my growth and development as a researcher of
the psychology of musical performance. I feel a strong calling to encour-
age and inspire younger generations of musicians to find their own au-
thentic musical expression, to realize their potential, and to build their
musical path on it, while encouraging them to master psychological skills
such as concentration through mindfulness, achievement of optimal en-
ergy levels by managing pre- performance excitement, openness, agility,
mental strength, flow, etc.
The monograph is divided into several sections according to the ad-
dressed topics. In the first section, I define success, specifically, success in
music, and musical performance/delivery in terms of several psycholog-
ical theories. In the second section, I address the indirect factors which
influence the success of musical performance. These are, among others,
musical abilities and their above-average expression in the form of gift-
edness/talent, personality traits with an emphasis on perfectionism, and