Anthony Plog on Music

Conversations with performers, composers, and entrepreneurs

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Aaron Williamon and Jason Evans: Cutting edge research in the performance psychology at the Royal College of Music in London

Anthony Plog, host
Eddie Ludema, producer
Date posted: Sep 1, 2023

Aaron Williamon is Professor of Performance Science at the Royal College of Music in London and is joined in our conversation by Jason Evans, who is head of the brass faculty at the Royal College and also principal trumpet with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Together we tackle the subject of performance psychology and specifically, performance anxiety. This is a very far ranging, open, and revealing conversation. I think it will be of interest to student and professional alike.


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Part 1

We begin our conversation with Jason talking about the road he traveled to become the youngest person to be appointed principal trumpet in a major UK orchestra and his experiences dealing with nerves during his early playing years. Aaron follows up by speaking about his research at the Royal College of Music and the projects he is currently working on. We end with Jason discussing the pressures of a high level performance job.

Part 2

A large portion of this second part of our conversation deals with performance psychology and dealing with Covid and also the groundbreaking research Aaron is doing at the Royal College. In discussing that research we do a deep dive into distributed simulation, where students can perform before a simulated situation of either a performance or audition……a unique lab that I hope can eventually be used by a large number of schools around the world.

Bonus Room

In the Bonus Room we first discuss the difference between stress and distress. And then we discuss how to relieve distress in performance situations, with Jason talking about “flipping the script.”

The podcast theme music, Four Sierra Scenes, written by Anthony Plog, is taken from Crystal Records S205, copyright ©1980 Crystal Records Inc., and is used by permission. Unauthorized duplication is not permitted.