How to Walk onto the Stage of Carnegie Hall Without Stage Fright










Nine and and a half years ago, in July of 2002, I cut out a couple paragraphs from a New Yorker article and taped it up on our kitchen cupboard. In it is the simple secret of how to instill confidence in your child or in a pianist who will debut at Carnegie Hall.

Never praise abilities, praise efforts.

Never tell your child, self, wife or student that she is talented, smart, or naturally gifted. Tell her, she is such a hard worker.

Never say to a pianist that he is so good at sight reading, tell him that he worked hard at sight reading and it paid off. Don't these sound similar? But no, no and no - they are polar opposites, like northern polar bears and southern penguins, we feel they are from the same region, but they live on opposite ends of the earth.

Do not tell a violinist that she has real talent, tell her that her hard work on her vibrato really paid off. This is a dangerously important distinction.

And secondly, it is better to praise small achievements than broad accomplishments. You really worked hard on this trill in the second movement; you're getting good at filling the cat bowl; I noticed how quietly you have been closing doors lately, you've been trying hard not to slam them; you're relaxing your shoulders now when you play the piano, you've put a lot into it.

If you want to walk on the stage of Carnegie Hall without stage fright, you need to start encouraging yourself way before that night. You need to make it a habit to tell yourself that you are a hard worker. Not in a magic phrase way. But find little things you worked at, notice them and encourage yourself. Surround yourself with friends who will do the same for you. "I love the way you worked on phrasing in the beginning of the slow movement, it sounds beautiful."

Here is the article snippet from my cupboard. . .

Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Columbia University, has found that people generally hold one of two fairly firm beliefs about their intelligence: they consider it either a fixed trait or something that is malleable and be developed over time. Five years ago, Dweck did a study at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. She and her colleagues approached a large group of social-science students, told them their English-proficiency scores, and asked them if they wanted to take a course to improve their language skills.

One would expect all those who scored poorly to sign up for the remedial course. The University of Hong Kong is a demanding institution, and it is hard to do well in the social sciences without strong English skills.

Curiously, however, only the ones who believed in malleable intelligence expressed interest in the class. The students who believe that intelligence was a fixed trait were so concerned about appearing to be deficient that they preferred to stay at home. "Students who hold a fixed view of their intelligence care so much about looking smart that they act dumb," Dweck writes, "for what could be dumber than giving up a chance to learn something that is essential for your own success."

In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer.

Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable; forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward.

They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They began to define themselves by their description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. . . They'd sooner die.
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Yes, every musician in or out of music school knows you have to practice like a little, red-tailed demon, talent alone gets you nowhere. But it is the self-encouragement of noticing our little victories, and how we talk with each other that make a difference. Are we saying, "Oh, you're so talented! You're going to go far." or "Wow! you really worked on your dynamics in that piece."?

You made it to the end of this article, you really showed determination. Keep up your good work!

What To Choose as Your One Genie Wish













This is what your parents should have chosen for you, and what you should for your son or daughter. . .

Confidence.

Occasionally, when I am in the middle of badgering my son, trying to change, inform, control, mold, teach him - I stop and ask what I am actually teaching him. Yes, I can defend every little thing I say as being important for him to learn, but. . .

What am I really teaching him?

What should I be teaching him? Well, I want him to grow into a confident person, a disciplined-on-his-own, compassionate, considerate (rather than bullying), thankful, happy, intuitive person who accomplishes great things.

If I stop and ask regarding any of these - am I teaching him these? Much of the traditional molding of a child is teaching him exactly the opposite, (you find it in both the classroom or home).

So, if I find a bottle washed up on the beach with a genie trapped inside, I would use my wish to give my son confidence.

And I can, just by putting less effort into molding him and letting him make his mistakes, work through his own challenges. Watch my son do his project exactly wrong and say nothing, or let him rebel a bit and say nothing.

There was an interview of a Japanese comedian we watched one summer in Tokyo. He was asked how he became such a success. The comedian said that when he was young, he was a very poor student. But if he would come home with a test with no answers right, his mother would exclaim, "Wow, anyone can get a 5 or 10, you got a perfect 0%. That's something." If he got one question right, she would say, "That's great, you got a 5%, let's put it on the refrigerator." No matter how poorly he did, his mother would praise his results.

The comedian says his mother gave him so much confidence that now when he gets up in front of a huge audience of people or performs on TV, he knows he will be funny and people will laugh.

I want that for my son. Don't you want that too? For yourself, your child?

There is a wonderful Jewish saying, "If you tell you child to study, he will grow up to be a person who tells his child to study. If he sees you studying, he will grow up loving to study."

We teach other lessons than what we think we teach.

(And by the way, in case some Genie is reading this essay, I hope I would get another wish or two for selfish, little me.)

A Perfectly Broken Performance









My son is learning the piano and bassoon, and last week we went to a dinner at a friends' Brooklyn home with about 15 people. Sage, at 14, is getting quite good and there was a piano in the dinning room, so he volunteered to play after the meal.

Sage sat down and began with the new Clementi piece his teacher gave him. He played with a handful of stutterings, restarting phrases he tripped on, as he tried to play this piece which he just began memorizing. But he didn't care. And it actually turned out well enough, then a nice applause followed.

My wife and I were in shock that he played the Clementi he hadn't quite mastered yet. And that he was totally unfazed by his rough playing, not unnerved or embarrassed at all.

I was even in more amazed when I realized my son had actually listened to me.

I had been explaining to Sage over and again that it's not the mistakes in a performance that matter but the quality of playing. And I had been telling him that when he performs to just enjoy it and not try to impress people with how talented he is or how perfect he has been been practicing. The performer is there to share his love of a piece with the audience, to move them with wonderful music.

He could have chosen to impress the room with his Debussy, but this Clementi Sonatina was what he was excited about, in the middle of learning. This was the music of his current heart.

I hope he carries this attitude all his life and in all his performances.

The Exotic Fish, My Flashlight,
and Monkey Waiters










I remember my son, Sage, getting upset only three times when he was very young. And each of these times he was quite inconsolable.

Once, we were given tropical fish and a tank. I thought the tank needed one more so I took Sage to a pet store and he picked out a fish. We brought it back in the small plastic bag you get, but when I put our new pet in the tank with the other fish, Sage cried.

He wanted to eat it. My wife took him to Citarella's to get another fish that was for eating, but Sage remained insistent on the one he and I had picked out. Not even a beautiful pink snapper could entice him.

When I first saw the movie Tampopo, I thought it was funny but too exaggerated - no one obsesses about food like they show in the movie. Then I married a Japanese girl and slowly began to realize as I frequented Japan, the movie was an understatement. The Japanese have a different relationship to food than all others and while my son was half Japanese, his tongue genes were inherited entirely from his mother.

Another time, Sage cried was when we showed him a flashlight for the first time. We sat on the bed and he put the the flashlight to my ear and looked in the other one. He was upset because he couldn't see the light through my empty head. What do you say to someone who is disappointed about such a thing?

The third time was entirely my wife's fault. We were headed to Chinatown in Yokohama. She was trying to get him excited about going to a restaurant there called something like "Monkichi." Somehow he got it in his head that it was a monkey restaurant and imagined monkeys serving us Chinese food. With such expectations, how could anyone not be disappointed? Sage cried until he fell asleep at the restaurant and missed the meal.

Never underestimate the Japanese, however. Last year we saw in the newspaper that a restaurant in Tokyo has monkeys which bring you your food.