Practice Performing

Scott Tucker provides excellent insight about how working for an ingrained technique allows performers to move toward more expressive performance. He compares the technique question to Larry Bird's drilling of a lay up:

"Years ago, Larry Bird did a commercial which showed him practicing lay up after lay up. I don’t remember what he was advertising, but I do remember what he was saying about basketball that you drill the basics, the fundamentals, until they are second nature so that when it is game time, you are free to play creatively. Preparing music is similar. A great musical performance is not as measurable as a basketball game, there are no statistics and no score, but it does transcend its own technical details. Great performers, ensembles and soloists alike, have one thing in common with each other as well as with truly great athletes; they make it look easy. This is because their technique is so well ingrained as to be second nature. One is tempted to conclude that with enough technique, anyone can achieve a great performance. Technique is important, but in itself it is not enough."

He asks: "As musicians, we cannot control everything that goes into a free and inspiring performance, so we must turn our attention to the things we can control and trust that given the right atmosphere the rest will emerge. We are like gardeners who till the soil and sow the seed trusting that their crops will appear. So the question is not how to give an inspiring performance, but what are those things that inhibit it?"

It's a good read. Check it out. http://www.choralmag.com/March2007/Tucker.html

For an excellent expansion of his ideas, check out the recent Choraltalk discussion about expressive singing and how, in turn, that might be intimately related to elements of acting and stage presence.
http://choralnet.org/lists/browse_threaded.phtml?thread=14262&lang=en&list=choraltalk&showAll=1&submit=Show+all+posts+in+topic

That discussion grew out of an observation about how recorded performances can help or hurt our art in that it's possible to have a technically perfect, yet still uninspired rendering, frozen in time as an aural standard choral conductors will hear as a model. The aural without the visual can set the standard incredibly high and leave out aspects which are critical in terms of real communication, the *intent* of all music, with the listener.

In combination, these views offer a pretty well-rounded primer on the old "perfection or passion" battlefield. As technology continues to aspire to be the road the rubber meets, rather than a live performance with all parties present, it will continue to set the choral bar ever higher as audiences hookup to something instead of buying a ticket.