iPad helped save concert pianist’s career by beating stage fright

Keys on a piano – Image credit: Alan Morris/Pixabay

The iPad has been credited with helping a concert pianist get over her stage fright, with the presence of the tablet making her feel more confident during a performance.

Artists of all kinds often suffer from stage fright, an anxiety that occurs when a person is about to perform to an audience. People deal with stage fright in various ways, but for one musician, it was simply having an iPad nearby.

In a Monday interview with NPR to promote her new album, concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein explained that she had to deal with decades of performance anxiety. Being onstage caused her to have panic attacks, which affected her confidence and ability to play.

The problem was an expectation that classical music soloists should be playing from memory and without sheet music. Even after considerable practice and preparation, the anxiety would cause her to lose where she was in the piece, which in turn made her more anxious.

The issue got so bad for Dinnerstein that, after one concert that didn’t go well, her husband proposed that she should quit. “I realized that either I was going to have to quit or I was going to have to perform with the music,” she called.

Despite redoubling her efforts in practice she couldn’t shake the anxiety. To Dinnerstein, this feeling “robbed me of the joy of being in the moment and thinking about the music itself.”

An Apple relief

To fix her anxiety, she had to ditch the “rigid” classical music conventions surrounding sheet music with a compromise. In 2017, Dinnerstein moved to use an iPad onstage.

She believes the iPad saved her career.

The iPad Pro is often used by musicians due to having a large screen, to match sheet music. A Bluetooth pedal is generally used to digitally turn the pages, eliminating the need for a human page turner or for the musician to use one of their hands mid-performance to touch the screen.

While Dinnerstein still works to memorize music for her performances and doesn’t necessarily look at the iPad while playing, she says the presence was assistive. Just having it there was “enormously freeing and comforting” to her, acting as a safety net without the stigma of traditional sheet music.

After starting to have the iPad available during performances, Dinnerstein was “more creative and free,” instead of dealing with the anxiety. She adds she had more time and “mental space and emotional energy” that she could put into her music.

That work resulted in the album “Complicite,” filled with music by Bach and performed by her chamber music group Baroklyn. The album is now available on Apple Music Classical.

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