if I should just calm down about that. I really hope I’m doing this right.

I attended a concert by highly accomplished students and teachers from a music camp nearby, and I was awestruck by their skill. And envious of their world of music. And grateful too, that I’d had some experience through my voice studies of what it’s like to settle deeper and deeper into a piece of music, to gain levels of intimacy with the music, the composer’s intentions, and with the other musicians on stage. I loved the process of the awkward first encounters with a piece, all angles and unexpected rhythms and shifts, and then the parsing it down to movement and segment, then the managing of tricky bits, the technical stuff of managing the breath and sound, and even eventually the I-am-sick-to-death-of-this-piece-let’s-just-do-the-damn-concert. It’s an amazing experience. I realized after watching these musicians that even after ten years of study I never quite gained the level of confidence to be a comfortable performer. What is confidence? Is it a skill that can be learned, a…