{"id":352,"date":"2012-07-11T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T10:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/?p=352"},"modified":"2012-07-11T15:20:04","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T15:20:04","slug":"what-makes-for-good-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/2012\/07\/11\/what-makes-for-good-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes for good performance?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Stephen Danelian<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

The cellist Yo-Yo Ma<\/a>, quoted in Imagine <\/em>by Jonah Lehrer:<\/p>\n

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them that the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner….To become a professional, you need to go through years of training.\u00a0 You get criticized by all your teachers, and you worry about all the critics.\u00a0 You are constantly being judged.\u00a0 But if you get onstage and all you think about is what the critics are going to say, if all you are doing is worrying, then you will play terribly.\u00a0 You will be tight and it will be a bad concert.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, one needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of the child who is just learning the cello.\u00a0\u00a0 Because why is that kid playing?\u00a0 He is playing for pleasure.\u00a0 He is playing because making this sound, expressing this melody, makes him happy.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

That is still the only good reason to play.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cellist Yo-Yo Ma, quoted in Imagine by Jonah Lehrer: When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them that the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner….To become a professional, you need to go through years of training.\u00a0 You get criticized by all your teachers, and you …<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-performance","category-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workplaceinteractors.com\/theinteraction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}