Seeing yellow: ‘Connection’ and routine in professional musicians’ experience of music performance

Abstract

What is it like for a professional musician to perform music in front of a live audience? We use Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) Grounded Theory to conduct qualitative research with 10 professional musicians to investigate their experience of music performance. We find performance to extend temporally beyond time spent before an audience and to include performers’ rituals of separation from everyday life. Using the abridged version of the model emerging from this data that we present in this article, we investigate how professional musicians’ experience of music performance centers on forging ‘connection’ with an audience and the ways in which this process is facilitated by the pre- and post-performance routines in which musicians engage. We find musicians’ understandings and experiences of ‘connection’ during performance to differ greatly, being influenced by their positioning on two spectra that emerge in this study and indicate the extent to which, during performance, musicians: a) value attentiveness and/or attunement in an audience and b) are open to variability.

The performative pleasure of imprecision: a diachronic study of entrainment in music performance

“…Four professional 2 Australian musicians consented to participate in the fieldwork conducted by Geeves (2012) : Brendan Maclean 3 (21, NSW), Ben Stewart (30, QLD), Emma Dean (25, QLD), and Emily Davis (27, SA; see Figure 1 ). Emma was the common link among the musicians as Brendan, Ben, and Emily had supported Emma when she performed in their home state during her previous national tours.…”

“…The spirit of our research is in line with that of Lucas et al (2011 , p. 76) who describe how their research, “rather than a series of controlled experiments intended to test specific hypotheses... explores real-life data with both entrainment theory and ethnography in mind.” As our interest is in tracing the observable presence and effects of entrainment within a music ensemble, we chose to keep the analysis of our case study at the level of behavioral observation and interview data rather than combining this with detailed analysis of audio and visual performance data as the EMMP researchers did. The data comprising this case study were drawn from fieldwork that Geeves conducted as part of his doctoral thesis research that used Grounded Theory ( Strauss and Corbin, 1998 ) to address the research question “What is the experience of music performance like for the professional musician?” (for more information on the methodology used in the thesis, please see Geeves et al, in press and Geeves, 2012 ).…”

La comunicación performer-público en la performance de la música académica

“…La experiencia de los músicos profesionales en la actuación en vivo es uno de los temas que no ha sido abordado de forma exhaustiva. En cambio, se ha priorizado la del oyente, y se han favorecido a las metodologías experimentales por sobre las no-experimentales (Geeves, Mcilwain y Sutton, 2014). Abordar la perspectiva del performer permitiría conocer más y mejor ciertos aspectos relevantes de su actividad (interpretativa, creativa y emocional), además de reconocer su importancia en la comunicación.…”

“…Sin embargo, la comunicación se focalizó en los aspectos comunicativos del timbre como un parámetro aislado del fenómeno sonoro en la performance. Geeves et al (2014) investigaron la experiencia de músicos profesionales incluyendo al público, indagada en términos de una conexión. Los resultados presentaron diferencias en relación a (i) su valoración de la atención y/o sintonía con la audiencia, y (ii) su apertura a la variabilidad.…”

Knit One, Play One: Comparing the Effects of Amateur Knitting and Amateur Music Participation on Happiness and Wellbeing

“…While both activities are self-evidently 'active ' (cf. Small's 'musicking', 1980), the outcome of knitting is a physical object which has no temporal dimension and can be revised (Stannard and Sanders 2015), while music-making typically results in a performance in front of an audience which is temporally bounded, increasing the potential for errors and performance anxiety (Geeves et al 2016;Kenny and Osborne 2006).…”