Breakout Session

What Mental Skills Do Performers Need Back and How Do They Get Them?

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 • 9 a.m.-10 a.m.

Presenter: Diana Allan
Introduced by: Mark McQuade
Location: Back Bay Meeting Rooms (3rd floor)

The performer’s mindset is the ideal performing attitude accompanied by the effective mental strategies that successful performers possess and use to perform their best when it really counts. In 2010, sport psychology expert Patrick Cohn and Diana Allan created a survey with this information that identified the top five challenges performers face including performance anxiety and perfectionism. This presentation will examine these challenges, the strategies that performers need to overcome these challenges to take their performing to the next level, and how we and our students can cultivate these mental skills.

About Diana Allan

Diana Allan, soprano, has appeared in operatic and concert performances throughout the Mid- and Southwest and has performed in Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Brazil.  In addition to her performing, Allan has over 25 years university teaching experience and currently teaches on the faculty of The University of Texas at San Antonio. As a certified Peak Performance Coach (2010), Allan works with musicians to help them assess and identify their unique strengths and challenges, to formulate customized Peak Performance Plans, and to help them learn and improve the mental skills necessary to prepare and perform at peak levels.   Allan is co-author of The Relaxed Musician: Mental Preparation for Confident Performances.  Her website, Peak Performance for Musicians, has a readership of performers from 151 countries.