Audience engagement is everything in a performance setting. It’s the job of the performer to transport the listener: the performer emotes their own feelings and experiences through the act of performing, which inspires and creates those same or similar emotions in the listener. It’s a beautiful process, one that is inherent throughout humanity yet undervalued in many parts of Western culture.
Reading this article about two of my childhood influences – Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme, speaking on things he learned from the late Layne Staley from Alice In Chains – caught my attention. What impressed me most was Nuno talking about “taking the audience with you” as a performer, which speaks to creating a memorable experience through presence rather than focusing on technical prowess and proficiency.
These concepts are something that a lot of modern musicians don’t grasp, in this world driven by virtuosos and dominated by rampant marketing. Many educational systems emphasize specialization rather than diversity, which I believe furthers a lack of understanding and self-awareness. As a music school student in the late 1900’s, I quickly realized that I wanted to focus on more than just classical music, that every musical genre was just as important to the human experience as classical was. This led me on a very non-traditional and somewhat circuitous path as an artist, one that I will never regret and would not trade for anything.
Most of my work as a professional musician over the past 20 years has been presenting classical piano concerts at retirement communities, and in that time, I’ve figured out how to develop and foster a relationship with my audience throughout my performance. This is no small feat, given that these performances were 60 minutes or less in length. Taking the listener on a journey has become a cornerstone to my creative process as a performer, and I always aim to share my breadth of knowledge and experience, no matter what genre I’m playing or who my audience is.
Audience Engagement in Performance Settings
Search
Popular Posts
-
Brick-and-Mortar Closures and How that Affects the Music Landscape
Change can be a good thing, even if it means that old systems we’ve become accustomed to are no longer available to us. As change happens around us, we adapt and evolve. This article discussed how Sam Ash – a major national music retail company – closed its doors earlier this year, after over a…
-
Preparation, Practice, and Persistence
Preparation makes a world of difference in any field. Focusing on a task for a finite period of time develops familiarity and confidence. Beyond that, repetition is paramount to successful execution of any task, creating self-awareness to foster both proficiency and creativity. If you prepare correctly and often, you can accomplish most tasks. This article…
-
Audience Engagement in Performance Settings
Audience engagement is everything in a performance setting. It’s the job of the performer to transport the listener: the performer emotes their own feelings and experiences through the act of performing, which inspires and creates those same or similar emotions in the listener. It’s a beautiful process, one that is inherent throughout humanity yet undervalued…