Performance Success : Performing Your Best Under Pressure (Theatre Arts) [Paperback]

Don Greene (Author)

Book Description

Series: Theatre Arts | Publication Date: October 1, 2001

Performance Success teaches a set of skills so that a musician can be ready to go out and sing or play at his or her highest level, working with energies that might otherwise be wasted in unproductive ways. This is a book of skills and exercises, prepared by a master teacher.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Don Greene, Ph.D. is a sports psychologist who has worked with groups as diverse as the US Olympic Diving Team, police departments, and opera companies. He is the author of Audition Success, also published by Routledge, and Fight Your Fear and Win (Broadway Books). He teaches at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878301224
• ISBN-13: 978-0878301225
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #232,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of useful ideas, October 18, 2005

By 

Stephen D. Kahn (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Performance Success : Performing Your Best Under Pressure (Theatre Arts) (Paperback)

After spending my teens and twenties playing rock and roll, I began playing the cello at 29 and a decade later now play at a professional level. Along the way I have experienced plenty of psychological bruises in performance situations--which, thanks to this book, I learned were self-inflicted. "Performance Success" has provided me with plenty of "right-mind" ideas for dealing with performance anxiety, which I have tried out successfully on stage. If you've ever dealt with nerves before performances or auditions, this book is a must-read!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning how to believe in your talent, May 18, 2006

By 

Violinist, (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Performance Success : Performing Your Best Under Pressure (Theatre Arts) (Paperback)

I believe strongly that the key to winning an audition lies in identifying the stresses that affect all musicians and performing artists, and learning how to become more comfortable with your abilities by accepting both your strenths and weaknesses. Winning an audition is a game, and whatever you can do to prepare yourself psychologically is a help. This book categorises the psychological activity that accompanies the lead up to an audition or performance, and allows you to set up a regime of positive thinking and relaxation that will inspire you to achieve more from each of your successive performances. I think it is an absolutely essential addition to any serious musician who really is determined to pursue their dreams. Too many of us engage in "doomsday thinking", and don't allow ourselves to find out what we could really achieve if we just gave ourselves a fighting chance. Obviously you don't have to use everything in the book, but as a professional violinist, i highly recommend it to any of my colleagues who have problems focusing on achieving a good performance in the meager ten munites that we often have to prove ourselves.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very good resource for performance artists, March 15, 2006

By 

C. de Vega (Boulder, Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Performance Success : Performing Your Best Under Pressure (Theatre Arts) (Paperback)

This is a very good book for performance artists, not only for musicians. The strategies and exercises for performing at your optimal under situations of high pressure are effective. Nonetheless, sometimes I thought they were oversimplified. The exercises explained in the book DO work, however, I thought that the lenght of time proposed in the book to practice and master them are unrealistic. I don't think that after practicing and performing without an intense focus for many years I could just make it happen in one week by just practicing it a couple of minutes a day. I know it takes (at least to myself) many months even a couple of years to train my mind to be in the "here and now" every single minute I play. What this book did for me was to create a new awareness of how should I approach my practice time, what kind of exercises to do to be better prepared for a big event and what kind of mental state I should be pursuing in the moments leading to and during performance.