Inspired Performance

Inspired Performance is what every musician hopes for every time they take the stage—it is a deep inner current of confidence, joy and wellbeing, amplified by clarity of the mind and a oneness with the music, the ensemble, and the audience.

Listeners, as well as performers, live for this experience. Just like the thrill we feel when athletes are in “the zone,” we get a taste of a musician’s joy in the flow of inspired performance.

Has music ever taken you into state of transcendence?

Was it at a rock concert, in a Symphony Hall, your practice room/living room? My most profound moment was in my old Subaru wagon, driving home on a dark and dismal night after a miserable rehearsal 20 years ago. I had just sung a simple 40-second song that completely transformed my consciousness from misery to intensely focused bliss.

It was an awakening that opened the door for a much higher level of musical experience and performance.

Since that night, I have found it increasingly easy to access inspired performance. After nearly two decades of research and experimentation, I have developed Inspired Connection, a process to open the inner pathway through which inspiration naturally flows.

The first step is the Hush: dynamic inner stillness.

In the midst of inspired performance, your body is free from tension and restlessness, your mind free from inner static.

The second step is the Heart: calm, intuitive feeling.

In inspired performance, your heart is free from confining fear and constrictive worry. Your heart safely opens to perceive the exquisite subtlety of nuance and expression.

The third step is the Lift: the rising current of joy.

In the upliftment of inspired performance, you are free from the ballasts of doubt, limitation and negativity. The Lift brings listeners to their feet. It’s the natural rise of inspiration.

The fourth step of the Flow comes when your ego steps out of the way.

It’s the vulnerability of complete commitment in performance, allowing something greater than ourselves to flow through us.

I use meditation as the foundation to create the space for these Freedoms.

Meditation creates the blossoming inner peace of the Hush, the safe space to open your Heart. 

Just as a quiet lake can reveal the splash of the tiniest pebble, the Hush and the Heart create a powerful instrument of keenest inner perception to discern even the faintest resonance of inspiration that manifests in you, whether as vibration, feeling, energy, or presence, or something completely beyond words.

This genuine, tangible resonance of inspiration becomes your key to rise above blocks and fears.

Meditation, non-attachment, and an upward focused mind create the Lift, the inner lightning rod to attract and catch the rising energy of genuine inspiration.

The simple attitude of service is what creates the Flow: the leap of faith to be completely in the moment as you infuse your music with that tangible experience and offer it in service to the audience. In this way you create space for the Flow of inspired performance.