Customer Reviews

Toward the Zen of Performance: Music Improvisation Therapy for the Development of Self-Confidence in the Performer

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The modest physical dimensions of the edition belie the broad and powerful messages contained within these covers. I am a composer who has thoroughly enjoyed reading Ms. Berger's observations, and I continue to revisit a number of sections that resonate deeply with my own perceptions about what we artists do and how we do it. Although the title leads one to assume that this is a guide for performance-oriented artists, I can tell you that any creative person-- whether they make their living as such or not-- will get a tremendous amount from Ms. Berger's wise words. I highly recommend this book.

Berger is a music therapist working with clients who experience performance anxiety or who are diagnosed with autism or ADHD. This book is based on her work with three highly skilled young musicians. They are talented and well trained, but experience such anxiety when called on to perform, especially in situations where they will be judged (auditions, recitals), that their music is not at the level their skills otherwise afford.

These performers have been trained in the Western classical tradition; which is to say, they perform from fully notated scores. Thus they experience an initial shock when they begin working with Berger, for free improvisation her stock in theraputic trade. Free improvisation is just what the name implies: make whatever sounds you want to make. Don't worry about whether or not they are music, much less whether or not they are good music, just make the sounds. Within this framework Berger will variously mirror, answer, support, or query her clients, in the music itself. She may also set them highly specific tasks. Thus in one session she directed a client to pick four notes and to play anything he wanted to using only those four notes.

A student of psychoanalytic technique can read her anecdotes and see parallels. In her world a client achieves a breakthrough when she can play easily, passionately, and deeply absorbed in the music itself. While these breakthroughs are achieved by musical means, they necessarily engage the whole person. The anxieties these clients faced involve conflicts raised in the context of performance because of the role those performances play in the clients' interaction with others. One client came from a cultural background that discouraged strong emotional expression while another was constantly belittled by his father. Berger's task was, in effect, to help these clients transform music performance from an arena that triggered these conflicts into an arena where they could set them aside.

We all, in some way, need such arenas. That is why we have art. But, in view of what Berger reports in this slim volume, I fear to consider the implications of the fact that we are three generations from being a society in which everyone made music routinely. We're told that autism and ADHD are on the rise. I've read an expert assert that "those with ADHD are adrift and disorganized in time" (Barkley 1997, 240) that mentions neither music nor music therapy. Berger tells me (in private conversation) that music therapy can help such children. Is it possible that we are seeing the neurological effects of living in a world where people no longer make music?

I have trained in Zen for over 30 years; my first teacher was a Zen master who was also an accomplished classical musician. I am saddened when the word "Zen" is used by individuals who have no experience with actual Zen practice. The state this book describes, of being one with the music, is what is known in Zen practice as relative samadhi: it is very similar to the state of flow described by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Relative samadhi is losing track of oneself through some activity, and it is a very beginning level of spiritual development. What Zen training develops is the ability to experience absolute samadhi, the state of calmness of mind and clarity when the mind has settled itself and no longer entertains itself by preoccupation with thoughts and emotions. But the experience of samadhi is not an end in itself: it is the state that, when conditions are right, spontaneously dissolves into kensho, the realization of one's true nature. This ideas in this book, whatever they might offer to the reader, have nothing to do with Zen. Excellence in some activity is not a goal of Zen: Zen students who are artists view their artistic work as a way to express and refine their realization, not as a separate goal to be pursued. In Zen, distinctions of success and failure, good and bad performance, are the kind of fundamental dualistic delusions that are at the root of all suffering.

The book itself, full of footnotes and citations, seems to be more a doctoral dissertation than a guide to practice. Ms. Berger is probably a fine music therapist, musician and educator, but there is no indication in her biography that she has ever had any experience with Zen practice other than perhaps reading books about it. It is inaccurate to use the word "Zen" to label her concepts when she has no idea what Zen is.