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Performance Anxiety Strategies

A Musician's Guide to Managing Stage Fright

  • Textbook
Performance Anxiety Strategies cover

Performance Anxiety Strategies

A Musician's Guide to Managing Stage Fright

  • Textbook
Quantity
Pre-order. Available May 13 2027
$117.00 RRP $130.00 Website price saving $13.00 (10%)

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

Music performance anxiety affects musicians across genres, skill levels, and stages of life.

While countless strategies have been proposed to address it, few resources bring together the full range of research, perspectives, and tools available to performers and educators today. Performance Anxiety Strategies: A Musician's Guide to Managing Stage Fright explores contemporary approaches to understanding and managing music performance anxiety, along with practical applications for individual musicians, studio teachers, and classroom educators. Drawing on current research and professional insights, this book examines both widely used and lesser-known interventions, including holistic, exposure-based, cognitive, behavioral, and pharmacological approaches.

New to this 2nd edition are expanded discussions of the following topics:
- neurodiversity
- learning differences
- mental health
- social media influences
- trauma-informed approaches to music teaching and learning

This edition also broadens its scope to reflect a wider range of musical styles, genres, educational settings, and performance experiences. Each chapter includes reflective exercises, practical strategies, perspectives from performers and athletes, and recommendations for teachers. The authors also draw on their own experiences navigating music performance anxiety across a range of musical, educational, and professional contexts. Bringing together research, professional practice, and lived experience, this book offers a comprehensive resource for performing musicians and the teachers who support them.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Disclaimer


1. Introduction
2. Why Do We Experience MPA?
3. Complicated MPA: The Intersections of Situational and Identity Trauma, Mental Health Challenges, and Music Performance Anxiety (with guest contributors Lydia Schoonover and Aida Nadafian)
4. Social Media Influences and Social Media (with guest contributor Lina Hejjawi)
5. Beyond the Snapshot: Neurodiversity, Developmental Inequality, and the Hidden Architecture of Performance Anxiety
6. Talk Therapies
7. Exposure Therapy
8. Reducing Interference: Medication and Performance Anxiety
9. Natural and Holistic Approaches
10. Body-Oriented and Expressive Arts Therapies
11. Especially for Teachers: Fostering Positive Performance Skills
12. Managing MPA as a Communal Effort: Changing the Future

Bibliography
Index
About the Authors

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published May 13 2027
Format Hardback
Edition 2nd
Pages 272
ISBN 9798881804428
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 21 b/w photos
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Casey McGrath

Casey McGrath is a violinist, recording artist, wr…

Author

Karin S. Hendricks

Karin S. Hendricks is Director of the School of Mu…

Author

Tawnya D. Smith

Tawnya D. Smith is Associate Professor of Music Ed…

Author

Charlene Ryan

Charlene Ryan is Associate Professor at Toronto Me…

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