March 4, 2025—Sara Schwindt, Assistant Director

In keeping with this year’s school-wide theme of “The Art of Performance,” psychologist and musician Dr. David Goldfinger was our guest speaker at the Spring Faculty/Staff Meeting in January 2025. Dr. Goldfinger gave a wonderful presentation about the psychology of performance anxiety and some evidence-backed tips for managing pre-performance nerves.

Many of our students will likely hear some of Dr. Goldfinger’s tips over the coming weeks and months from their teachers who heard his talk. There were too many excellent nuggets of wisdom to fit within the space of a blog post, but I would like to lift up one in particular—simply because it was surprising and also made total sense. This piece of advice was: “Assume the Audience is On Your Side.”

Why would this be surprising? Well, as a musician myself, I know that a lot of pre-performance anxiety comes from the fear of making a mistake in front of a hostile or judgmental audience. We often assume that a bad performance is likely to be met with derision and criticism, thereby making an embarrassing situation even worse.

But from my experience, this is almost never borne out in reality. Over the years as a performer and K-12 music educator, and finally in my role here at WCMS, I have seen or participated in hundreds of student performances. And out of all of those performances, over all those years, I cannot recall a single one where the audience reaction to a mistake has come even close to the nightmare scenarios I would imagine in my own head when battling performance anxiety.

And nowhere has that been truer than here at WCMS, where student performances are treated as celebrations of the participants’ hard work and progress and are met with support and encouragement, no matter what. In other words, audiences at WCMS demonstrate time and time again that they are on the performer’s side, rooting for their success, cheering them when they do well and supporting them when they have a difficult time. It’s one of the things that makes this such a unique and special environment in which to learn.

As we continue through this year of exploring “The Art of Performance,” I hope you will find encouragement in this supportive community of music lovers.