The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 018 Anthony McGill: Focus & Efficiency in Practice & Performance

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 18. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode about the audition process with Nick Platoff, Associate Principal Trombone of the San Francisco Symphony. Today, I speak with Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic. Before joining the New York Phil, Anthony held the Principal Clarinet position with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and he was

Starting point is 00:00:53 Associate Principal Clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony. A native of Chicago, Anthony attended the Curtis Institute of Music and is a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as the first Sphinx Medal of Excellence. He is considered among the top solo, chamber, and orchestral musicians today, and as such, he's performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. He's collaborated with artists such as Emanuel Axe, Yiffen Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuka Uchida, and Long Long, and in January of 2009, he performed with Yoyoma, Itzhak Perlman, and Gabriela Montero at President Obama's first inauguration. Anthony teaches clarinet at the Curtis Institute, and he also serves on the faculties of the

Starting point is 00:01:43 Juilliard School and Bard College Conservatory. In addition to his performances with the New York Phil, Anthony has several solo performances ahead this year, and he performs with his brother Demar McGill, principal flutist of the Seattle Symphony, on a brand new CD coming out soon and featuring music by Saint-Saëns, Danzy, Joel Packett, and Michael Ables. You can visit anthonymcgill.com for more info. In today's episode, we have a great conversation about attention and presence in both practice and performance. Among other things, we discuss Anthony's journey to the New York Phil, the importance of absolutely loving music and choosing it as a career, how to nurture focus and make practice more efficient,

Starting point is 00:02:32 and how to work towards having more flow and performance. It was fantastic to discuss those important topics with Anthony and his answers are full of information and inspiration and I hope you enjoy. Let's go to the show. Anthony Miguel, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me. Anthony, you're currently the principal clarinetist of the New York Phil after holding the same role with the Metropolitan Opera for 10 years and you maintain a busy solo and chamber music career and you teach at Juilliard and Curtis and the Bard College I think we can say that you've reached what we can call the pinnacle of a classical music career and I'm so happy to have this chance to talk with you today because I think there's so much

Starting point is 00:03:31 my listeners and myself can learn from listening to your story and your insight oh yeah thanks for uh having me on it's been uh i guess it has been a fun and interesting career so far so looking forward to what's next nice i ask all of my guests to share their artistic path because i feel that we can understand someone's point of view so much better when we understand their context and their background story so can you please tell us a little bit about you and your musical journey and how you got to where you are now and how things have unfolded for you yeah well i i grew up in chicago on the south side of chicago and uh two two wonderful parents and they believed in giving my brother and i a well-rounded education and they were both

Starting point is 00:04:22 educators when they met and um so music was just a part of that education and so my brother started playing the flute when I was really young and I kind of grew up listening to him play and practice and I wanted to play a wind instrument because of him. And so that's how I kind of got started with playing the clarinet. We took a few piano lessons for maybe half a year, maybe a little longer from a neighborhood piano teacher. But we really didn't, we didn't have a piano. We had a keyboard electric keyboard at home and you know it wasn't a full-size keyboard either so and we couldn't afford a real piano so this was the wind instruments and the smaller instruments kind of helped out with that and so it kind of went from there. And how did you get started

Starting point is 00:05:14 playing the clarinet? I saw that you went to the Merritt School of Music which is not too far away from my house and is a great institution oh yeah so starting off you know i started playing you know at the school band i got to pick an instrument and i picked the saxophone and you know i they were like saxophone's too big for you so play the clarinet so um maybe one year in or something when we're looking to kind of study more seriously um uh i i started going to Merritt, which is, as you mentioned, which is the Saturday program. It's kind of like a music conservatory. And at the time, it was a tuition-free program. And this was one of the early and finest community music programs in the area. And, you know, the mission was to reach

Starting point is 00:06:06 all kids, but also to reach kids that were from the inner city and kids that might have not otherwise been exposed to music or had the opportunity to study music and to give them you know a place that they could go and and study at the highest level from a very young age which is what you kind of need to do in order to be a musician but also just to study music in the right way in a kind of a full way we had theory we had clarinet class we had there was orchestra there wind ensemble there was all of these things ear training and there was a community of students and especially like-minded parents that also believed in music education and the arts in general so it gave me a foundation that is the reason i'm here doing what i'm doing today and

Starting point is 00:07:01 it was in this small basement of this building the dearborn station downtown chicago this old kind of railroad kind of station. And now it's expanded into this really beautiful building on the near west side in Chicago. And, you know, it's just a wonderful organization. And I really love them. They're my family. I love a lot of the people that kind of were there with me are still in touch with the school and doing work for the school. And so it's a very special place for me. And from there, you moved on to Curtis? Yeah, so a couple things happened before Curtis. I ended up transferring high schools from Whitney Young High School to the Interlochen Arts Academy.

Starting point is 00:07:57 And Merritt actually gave me my first scholarship to go study at the camp, the Interlochen camp in Michigan. And this was, you know, eight hours away from Chicago in the middle of the northern Michigan woods. And my brother went there first, of course. And we took these big van rides up there. And this was just such a kind of talk about a culture shock because it was just very different than Chicago. You know, it's just like a couple between two lakes, you know, interlocking and like the cabins. We stayed in cabins and it was like this rustic feel. and you know what i fell in love with this place i just loved it and um from there i learned about

Starting point is 00:08:38 the academy the arts academy which is the high school so i went there first and that was kind of also eye-opening and and different and kind of sad i was like you know 15 or 16 years old but also to be away from my family was sad but it was also a place where artistically and socially i grew so much and was able to once again um kind of find be around my people you know the people that love the arts and and there was dance and visual art and the whole thing was there an academic and from there after studying with richard hawkins their great clarinet teacher and mentor to me i went to curtis institute of music in philadelphia that is such a great journey And thank you for sharing it. I particularly love how you talk about this being a community or a family, because I agree with you. I mean, music is a great part of a well-rounded education, and it also takes a village to create a musician.

Starting point is 00:09:39 And you also mentioned that at Merit, you learn to study music in the right way. And that's a great segue to what I wanted to discuss with you today more specifically, which was focus, because you have to perform at the highest level day after day with a grueling schedule. and I'm really curious to hear about how you learned to control your attention and your presence and both your practice and performance. You and I both know how important focus is to make practice efficient and productive and it involves so many things, right? I think it starts with being interested in what we're doing, having a clear vision of what we're trying to accomplish and being motivated by an outcome of some sort and we have to have the right mindset you know what's important to focus on and we also need to have the right physical condition proper rest proper nutrition etc and so you already mentioned that you know merit brought you this community

Starting point is 00:10:44 brought you this structure around focusing on the right things what would you what do you think helped you learn to focus in the practice room? Where did that start and how did it evolve? Yeah, that's a really great, great topic and great question. It's something I think about a lot because I spend a lot of time talking to my students and other students about this sort of thing. And the lifelong pursuit of music is something that is, in a way, all-consuming. So thinking about music and being curious about it and thinking about concepts like focus and the mind is something that I do a lot.

Starting point is 00:11:30 And being in an environment where it allows you to enjoy the thing that you want to do as well, so that's what Mary provided for me at a very young age, which was that you tend to focus on, frankly, things that you love, things that you that you are not just passionate about but i'm talking about a more intense kind of um love and focus on the thing and when you are in an environment that allows you to enjoy the thing that you're doing and in my case the clarinet and and music and musicians you can explore what it means to have a life in that endeavor in music and so when i first what

Starting point is 00:12:29 i first learned about dedication and music it was actually at meredith and it was a guest artist who was talking to us and he said something that i always repeat to anyone who asks about dedication and things like this and he said he was very frank he was very straightforward he said and i was like 11 or something maybe and he said look look everybody music is a very difficult profession so i will tell you that if you can imagine yourself doing something else besides being a musician do that but if you love music and you can't imagine yourself doing anything else because you love it so much and it's such a part of what you do and who you are and what you care about then do that then become a musician and so at that moment i might have not

Starting point is 00:13:28 decided oh yeah i'm definitely gonna become a musician but you know my brother was doing it and doing it really well and performing but i think at that moment i realized that's something that it takes it takes it's gonna take a lot to do this but it's not it shouldn't feel like you're you're trying to stay in this because what i realized probably a year or two later was that i did love this but in a way that i knew that i wasn't trying to become a musician but that i was one. And I realized at a very young age that this is what was inside of me. This is what spoke to me. This is what was the thing that I was. And it wasn't something that I was trying to get or something that I was trying to achieve. It was just being a musician was

Starting point is 00:14:18 who really who i was and to kind of have that realization allowed me to to work hard to fail hard to succeed to do all these things but never to like really think that this wasn't who i was so i could be really disappointed about outcomes you know and auditions and things competitions but I could at least say that no but I loved it I loved it I loved the clarinet I love the sound of music it spoke to me it touched me and then you know then you go from there so that's where I would start even for some of my older students and you have to kind of remind or discuss with them what are your loves do you love this are you just doing this for things or are you doing it because you are trying to be a great be an artist and be a musician and that you are one and that

Starting point is 00:15:16 you love music enough that this is what you want to do and focus on so that's the first thing the second thing is that that the amount of focus it takes in the practice room is is something else as well it's about um it's about not being afraid to just kind of be there and and and and be in the room and spend time doing the thing so i don't know what that is i guess it's like an active presence of being okay with having the instrument there with you or also being able to be in the room and listen to music and learn that way and be curious and about the equipment that you're using or the instruments or the type of bow or the what you know yeah i was talking to one of my colleagues on stage the other just the other day about this thing and we were he was discussing

Starting point is 00:16:15 a way to practice and i was discussing a different way to practice like technical passages like varying articulation and speed, but also notes that you land on randomly. And we were introducing each other to different ways of practice. And when I have these discussions, I do feel like this is how I managed to learn my entire life, which is that when I'm talking to someone else about learning I'm learning and so when I'm talking to my students about learning I'm learning and it's this circular thing that returns to you what you give to it and in music I guess you could call it like being a little bit of a music nerd or being curious about it or being open to it that you have to kind of it helps I wouldn't say you have to but it helps to

Starting point is 00:17:14 enjoy that. And that comes along with the way you practice in the room too, because enjoying that, enjoying challenging moments in scales or challenges of etudes or of in certain ways or pieces, that challenge you're going to have to deal with a lot. So if the struggle of those difficulties technically aren't in some weird sick way enjoyable then it's going to be very difficult to focus and it's going to be very difficult to spend as much time as you need to to get better at the thing i love that answer so much because you really bring it to the root of focus coming from this deep knowledge of who you are as you said that you you felt like you were a musician, you are a musician, you don't just love music. So it's that deep knowledge of

Starting point is 00:18:13 who you are and what you want. And it really gives a purpose to your focus. There's a motivation there for this presence that you talk about this awareness that we want to cultivate in the practice room, how you, you know, listen and how you experience the practice. I love this. And I also love what you're talking about when you say these exchanges with colleagues and students and how you keep learning. I talk to my students about keeping this state of beginner's mind where you're always open to new ideas and always searching and asking yourself, what else? What else can I try? What else is there? What else can I see? You know, thank you so much for this really great answer. And speaking of this presence and this focus, do you have a way that you prepare

Starting point is 00:19:02 for a practice session to make sure that you are focused that you are in the right mindset and how do you nurture this focus throughout a practice session well i i'm i'm a little bit free form with the way i approach so having said all that about you know preparation and focus and structure is that my structure for practicing is very minimal, meaning, and there are very many different philosophies on this, but my general approach to practicing is that I want to do it, okay, to keep it simple. But what we were talking about earlier is just kind of like over the years developing a sense that I wanted to research mental techniques and mental training techniques

Starting point is 00:19:56 and read about sports psychology and all these other things. So I did a lot of research like that about those sorts of things. But in my own practice, once I start, there's a general loose structure, but it is quite loose. and I've changed it over time and I change it almost every day. So it's much more like I'm starting like a new piece or a new piece of work every day, unless there's a short-term goal, which is always. And that way, in those situations, it's much more defined and much more structured. Um, but within the day of practice, if I, for instance, let me give you

Starting point is 00:20:48 an example. If I am, uh, need to practice a solo, I need to practice excerpts. I need to practice scales, right? Um, I generally will probably start off with like a nice warmup or, or just a quick warmup with scales now. And now it's different than it was when I was younger, but that's, that's what i would generally do like even a couple tones where it's not like an hour of long tones for instance but it's a couple sounds that you make to try to feel the voice through the instrument so the field you basically listen to yourself so you listen to yourself in the right way to get a sense of this is this is the voice this is the sound and this is the tone we're trying to improve. We're trying to improve. That's what we're trying to do. And then I'll go on to

Starting point is 00:21:40 a series of scales, a circle of fifths. And now just my recent practice is just, you know, the thirds. This may happen in 30 minutes, like right before an orchestra rehearsal or something like that. So it's much more compressed, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I am listening and that I'm actually trying to get better at the thing. So I'll get frustrated. I'll do the same thing in a very small amount of time that I used to do in many, many hours. But if I have a free day, for instance, not right before rehearsal, I used to like to just mix it up. So I would maybe start off with a solo and then mix in a technical passage and an excerpt that I like.

Starting point is 00:22:28 And then maybe I'll go to an etude, and then maybe I'll go back to the excerpts, or maybe I'll go back to the scales, and maybe I have an articulation problem, and I'll work on articulation. and so it's like i'm kind of you can't see me because it's it's a podcast is radio but i'm like waving my hands around in a very free manner like not in a straight way but in the just kind of flowing around the room and that it's in that way that i like to to work and to practice. And others like to have, you know, the schedule written down in the calendar, exactly what they're going to, you know, points they're going to work on for these many minutes. And that works for some people. But I find that the mix up, the kind of confusion and a little bit of artistry for me in the practice session, which means that I can do whatever I

Starting point is 00:23:31 want to do and wherever my mind takes me in that practice session and usually to the spots that I that are tricky that those are the parts that really matter if I do those I feel like I am learning a lot and I also like to do extreme slow extremely slow practice by the way that's like super important again I love this answer so much because you know two things seem to emerge in what you're saying that resonate with me really strongly. And you were talking about this want and this desire to practice. And that's something that I find more and more as I grow old, is that the more I find ways to make practice enjoyable by cultivating presence, but also practicing in ways that involve, you know, the word you use was art history. Absolutely. The quicker I get

Starting point is 00:24:31 result and i think it's because i am enjoying it enjoying it i am more focused and you know and having this clear the second thing is having this clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish you were talking about listening intently and knowing what you want to hear so i would say these two things mixed together this desire to want to practice and having the clear idea of What you want is so crucial in creating the focus. Yeah, I think just also to mention, which is really important, is that it's important that, especially because I talk to my students all the time about this, sometimes you don't want to practice. So, okay, sometimes you don't want to. Really?

Starting point is 00:25:16 No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, exactly. So that's also the thing. So my only desire is that even when I don't want to, that I will. And I never liked scheduling specific times only because often if I had something scheduled specifically, it felt like I was being forced to do it by someone or something. But the one thing you have to remember, I think, especially when you're studying and you're a student, is that no one's forcing you to do this, especially when you get into the conservatory years. This is something that if you just kind of go, slip into it. So as somebody once told me, just take out the clarinet.

Starting point is 00:26:04 Just take out the clarinet. Or if you have trouble starting practicing, start it while doing something else that is not focused. like so start like if you're spending too much time on your computer on social media or something like that take out your clarinet while you're like you have the tv on or it used to be just the tv or while you have your computer just take it out just take it out and start practicing and what will happen and this happened to me a lot and this was before social media really hit but like if i TV on or something like that, is that I will get up and start playing and like to have to turn off whatever else I'm doing that I'm not focused on because I like playing the clarinet. So if you

Starting point is 00:26:53 remember you like playing the instrument then and you take it out, then often your focus will go to that. And so that's a kind of a fun trick I like to use. I was like, oh gosh, I'm so tired. I don't know if I want to practice let me let me just I'm doing this other thing but let me just let me just take it out and play a couple notes and then you're into your practice session and then it's like you just release yourself into it and it's a trick because you were talking about focus but I'm talking about being distracted at first which everyone is but as long as it's not like how should I say so it's it's like changing the way you do something and not um forcing it on yourself but taking out taking out the instrument is a good way to start i agree with this i wrote a

Starting point is 00:27:43 blog entry a few years ago that i called commit to 10 because i find the same thing you do sometimes i don't feel like practicing and it must get done at some point when you're a professional musician you need to you know you're on the deadline and i found that if i just took the violin out and committed to practicing for 10 minutes but something I felt like doing if it was just long tones or scales or just playing a few notes around my only promise to myself was to do it for 10 minutes and usually by you know five minutes into it I was good to go I was full of ideas of things I wanted to practice and felt like practicing because sometimes you know the instrument sits in the case and it's kind of a little bit like a monster it's a little bit scary

Starting point is 00:28:31 because there's so much to do and we're thinking about the level things are at and the level we want to get them to and it it feels like such it feels like a lot of work you know and sometimes we don't feel like working a lot but exactly as you said if we just take it out and start playing usually we're in the flow and things evolve from there exactly the other thing i love is you talk about variety and that's also another great way to have the focus because when you try new things this variety that you talk about then it turns into a little bit of an exploration game and that makes things so much more fun and it engages our brain in different ways yeah definitely i like to um yeah try to play play games you know and try to do things of course you you repeat there's a

Starting point is 00:29:26 lot of repetition and practicing of course a ton but yeah if you go from you know you're using the same techniques too so isolated practice meaning okay i do you know separation of of technique so you're doing um scales and then i do tone and then i do excerpts and then i do solos that sometimes we forget that all of it is the same stuff so some people don't do don't like to do scales that much at all you know older players for instance but they do scales because they doing do it do mozart or they do you know they do different pieces that encompass all these different things i've heard people with this sort of concept but i think it's just important to realize that these are all these are all notes these are all music and so the variety creates

Starting point is 00:30:20 like a sense that everything you're playing are scales everything you're playing are long tones and everything you know if you're doing excerpts it's not boring versus solos there it's music you know it's you have to remember that it's it's music and so whenever something gets boring i was like like to listen to listen to the music so practicing is about listening to it's about listening to yourself but it's also about listening to music so i like to listen to the pieces i'm playing i like to listen to different cds and recordings of um or you go online and listen different recordings of of the piece this is something that i i like to do to speed up my practice in general is is that if there were if there was like a symphony that i never played or

Starting point is 00:31:10 an orchestra piece or even especially with the operas i would always and and like maybe i didn't i didn't have enough time to practice up to the level that i wanted to do the most important thing i could do to improve my performance would be to listen to it with a pencil and my score because it would teach me all kinds of things that i would have done wrong to start and then you can fill in the notes and fill in some other things later. But just rubato, timing, phrasing, just general concept of what the piece is

Starting point is 00:31:42 and what it means and what it says, you can get without spending 10 hours on a thing. Sometimes you would be better off listening to it for the full 15, 20 minutes or hour, 30 minutes, whatever it is, listening to it first and then approaching it from there because then you have okay I have somewhere to go so when I was especially when I was really young I used to listen to clarinet music especially a lot I listened to all of the pieces really like every day every night I would go to bed

Starting point is 00:32:16 listening to pieces and that I loved and some I didn't and I think it really helped me to approach music from a listener standpoint that this is what instead of just like a athletic standpoint from playing the thing so i think it helped me first of all keep loving loving it because this is why you want to do it because wow this is so beautiful or this is so expressive it keeps you on the right path to see okay what do what am i trying to do here like what am i trying to sound like how do I get better and listening is this is a really important thing to to improving and it sends your focus to the right place it really helps narrow where to send this awareness that's great how about in performance you were talking about mental techniques earlier how how does

Starting point is 00:33:10 focus show up in performance for you you perform constantly yeah on a weekly basis how how does that translate for you on stage yeah I think one thing that really helps is just to try to do it and if you know you're at the level where you're not quite there performing a ton then to try to pretend like you are so I I really love doing mock performances or mock auditions for people for excerpts, but also just not even, you don't even need to call them mock. I think they're real. I think they're real performances. So if you play for a friend in a practice room, or you play for your boyfriend or your spouse or your mother or father or relative, or even your dog, or even your tape recorder, I think these are all actual performances because, you know, your brain plays

Starting point is 00:34:09 lots of tricks on you of course so sometimes you can you'll you'll be playing a concert that you think is not a big deal and all of a sudden your brain will act like it's like you're playing your debut at carnegie hall and you'll get nervous for it right it's because it's because your brain doesn't isn't really good at determining what you should be afraid of so a lot of times these sort of things um you don't need it's the same so you can get just as nervous playing for your dog because you actually have to perform and the fear of playing for your dog comes from things that aren't real so this is challenging this is not easy this happens to me all the time so a part of it has to be that you have to like practice and I practice sometimes to be perfectly

Starting point is 00:34:56 honest about it sometimes I practice out of a place of that kind of fear like everyone has right i'm like oh no okay three four weeks three weeks i have this big concerto coming up i better get practicing you know this is something we all do right but then at some point we have to realize oh wait i've done my work i've done the preparation um now i need to perform so you can't wait till the performance to do that though you kind of have to have prepared ahead of time for that performance and that's i think that's a way that you do it and within performance i think it depends i think sometimes when i'm performing really well i'm focused and it's not even like focused it's like i am feeling and hearing the music at the same time right that's that's when

Starting point is 00:35:46 it's like really great when i'm feeling and hearing it and feeling like i'm a listener and i'm enjoying it and it's a it's a thing when i'm struggling on the stage which mentally which happens all the time. I basically have to just continue, continue along. Another thing, a third thing would be that I have messed up on stage so many times that it is not a huge shock to me anymore. It's not pleasant necessarily, but I've done that before. Like I've missed notes before. I have forgotten the notes, you know, playing from memory before. I've done this a lot of times And so when I talk to my students about their frustrations and almost like they really get depressed about their playing

Starting point is 00:36:38 and anxious about all this stuff, I kind of look at them and I say, you know how many times I've messed that up? How many times I've messed that passage up in this piece in a performance? And I tell them, I've done it a lot. And I've also practiced it thousands and thousands of times. so and i tell them have you done that yeah and so that's why i tell them you can't give up now because you messed up a passage like that because i've done it a lot and you know i'm a professional

Starting point is 00:37:10 musician so i'm not advocating to you know have technical mistakes in public all the time but i'm just saying part of part of getting used to performing a lot is actually accepting that you may not be perfect that you may like you may be you may have a bad day or a bad night or a bad read or a bad whatever but it's the way you get better actually is is knowing that when you walk on the stage it doesn't matter that you have a bad read right no one cares it's about like playing music it's about being artists it's about being musicians about reaching people emotionally and when you focus on those things and you're carefree all of a sudden you play really well so this is what mentally what you're trying to think about or focus on which is that

Starting point is 00:38:06 this is about something greater than just me trying to play perfectly this is something more important and and also it's not it's not really it's not heart surgery or brain surgery either Like, no one gets hurt. I've walked off stage. People clap at the end, generally. Even if I had the worst performance of my life, you know, it feels horrible. But then you're like, you wake up the next day, you're like, okay, that's done. That's, you move along.

Starting point is 00:38:38 You wish it had gone better. But then you try to, like, think about what could have gone better? What could I have done better? Could I have practiced a little bit more? Did I practice enough? Maybe I practiced too fast. maybe I'm going to practice really slowly. And then you think about it again. Did I practice enough? And the answer might be no. The answer might be no. Or the answer might be my mind was

Starting point is 00:39:00 really unfocused, meaning I was thinking about bad things. Or it was focused all right, but it was focused on really, really negative thoughts. So that's kind of going back to the focus thing. that might be really interesting to to process every time you have a performance that doesn't go what was I actually focused on and what was what should I have been focused on and I was actually focused on what are my friends going to think if I mess up you know what are my teachers going to think if I mess up you know what is this audience going to do what is this going to do to my career if I don't have a good day you know you're focused on all these other things so that's what happens sometimes when you get to be a professional or you have like some success and stuff you start to

Starting point is 00:39:46 sometimes perform better because you actually stop focusing on the wrong things because you have something that's called confidence which is elusive when at different times in your life and it's elusive even when you're a professional so you have to remind yourself oh wait no you can play the clarinet like you can get out there and do this you've done this before you can do it again and you have to convince yourself but that process never ends for me and it's always challenging at different periods I have to challenge myself more than others and I'm not talking about in the distant past either I'm talking about in the very recent recent past I've had to do this with particular performances that you know I can

Starting point is 00:40:33 I can think of right now within the last couple of months, Saturday, it's Monday now, like, you know, I've had to do this. I do this all the time. This process of doing it gets easier. The challenge of performing and the challenge of just trying to focus on the right voice in your head, that doesn't get easier. But I know how to do it. And I know that I need to do it when I start to get negative voices focused in my brain. Anthony you've combined so many deeply deeply important topics in this answer with a great answer you know like you're saying how much we can learn from performing and these are things that we cannot learn when we are in the practice mode it's the performance teaches us so much and

Starting point is 00:41:18 as you said so well it's important to when mistakes happen move on focus on the present moment and then learn from them but also you talk about this joy of the present moment you You know, some people talk about being in flow and I find that it's a very interesting concept how sometimes the best way to be focused in a performance is to let go of control a little bit and really let the work speak for itself and for us to be focused on our enjoyment of the music. And you incorporated so many other awesome things. Thank you so much. and it's incredible information because focus can be to use your word one of the most elusive element in our practice and it's such an important one and practice and performance you know i'm having such a great time it's so interesting talking with you and i wish we had the time to

Starting point is 00:42:14 discuss so many more topics but i know you have to get going so how about a round of rapid fire questions before we wrap up our discussion sure sounds good so for the people who are dreaming of a career that resembled yours. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? Oh, I guess that could be a long answer. But I mean, I play, you know, I play with the orchestra, which is awesome. I, you know, I have a family. I do, I managed to do a lot of chamber music, as you mentioned before. And it's, it's really great. I get to play with a lot of string quartets mainly and do some other things thrown in there and recently I've been doing a lot more concertos with different orchestras besides my own as well getting to travel around doing that

Starting point is 00:43:02 so it's a it's a really it's really great I couldn't have imagined that I'd be doing all these different things but I've always kept my options open and and it's about the next performance and just being able to enjoy people that I play with and and so that's really great what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instrument ah and this is this a musical skill not necessarily anything that you think in young musicians today there's so many things uh yes oh i would there are a couple things one is to get better at and maybe practice or take a class i've never done that but i should But in public speaking, that would be a good one.

Starting point is 00:43:51 Another would be get really good at using the Internet to promote your career in different ways. Research it, you know, figure out how you go about doing that. There's so many different ways you can, you know, present things and promote, you know, concerts or whatever. get really good at that sort of thing and third develop an interest in something a hobby for instance I've always liked hobbies because they get my mind away from my biggest love and hobby which is clarinet but you know like you want to make sure that feels like a hobby too and like in a good way yeah you you don't want to feel like do other things because you don't like you don't want your job because you do it so much to start to feel like it's a job because you do it

Starting point is 00:44:48 too much so you know having an interest or a love of something that gets your mind off of that thing that is a real hobby that you can actually work hard on though that you can kind of try to master keeps in perspective like how you started playing an instrument or what you liked about playing an instrument and hopefully still do it's it's it should be the same thing yeah and it brings us back to this beginner's mind perspective too i find that my hobbies sometimes inspire my practice yeah definitely oh all the time yeah do you have a favorite tool in the practice room yes the tape recorder that's an excellent one if you have a tape recorder tape recorder and a pencil you need a pencil when you practice i some i see so many copies of like excerpts that or

Starting point is 00:45:39 pieces that people bring in nothing is written in the music and I think I wonder how they managed to play it at all because or and I and I imagine what kind of practicing they were doing because I can't remember there are too many things to remember and so a couple of them might be very important like that natural you you've missed five times in a row or that flat on the pitch why isn't it written in you've done it 10 times in a row like it should be in the music like the first time you did it in the practice room it should have been in there you know like that's the kind of stuff i tell my students all the time it's like no just don't be ashamed of it take out the pencil write it in i tell my students if it happens once it's an accident if it happens twice

Starting point is 00:46:26 it's already becoming a bad habit so put those accidentals in yeah exactly how about a favorite book do you have one that you would recommend and it does not have to be a book related to music all the books by um haruki murakami like most most of them favorite books but of course the famous one is the one are the wind-up bird chronicles you know i just heard about that author for the first time in the last few weeks so i'm gonna check it out now oh because they're very like they're very um uh he likes he likes music and so his books are very are are kind of musical and their uh construction and event it's full of fantasy and strangeness but um he also i just love his uh his mentions of like a certain piece because then you see you hear music in the

Starting point is 00:47:20 book you can end and if you don't know the piece you can like listen to it outside of the book and then go back into the book, and then you hear the sound within the book, which is really cool. Wow, that sounds amazing. What is the best advice that was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners? Advice my parents gave me, and continued to give me throughout most of my life, is one that when I don't do this, I generally regret it. But they say, look, if you're given an opportunity, you know, they say, don't shut the door. Basically you, you should, um, you should always knock on the door, right. And then open it and see first, but don't like not go in because you're afraid of whatever. Try, try to check out the

Starting point is 00:48:11 opportunity or the other phrases, um, cross that bridge when you get to it. So we always kind of sometimes cut off our our entry point into this this new opportunity because we say oh no that's not for me because of x okay and then you then you don't um go to the audition or whatever but what if you were to spend your life actually you know going up to the bridge or knocking through the door or opening the door walking through first and then deciding if that's not what you wanted to you know so if you're like you know underemployed for instance and you know i have students tell me like oh well i don't play bass clarinet so i'm not going to take that audition and i'm like wait a second you're not going to take an audition you should learn the instrument

Starting point is 00:49:00 take the audition and then decide you're not interested because you might win it there are So many instances like that where we don't go through with the thing because of some other thing. Yeah, that's great advice. Anthony, do you have a quick actionable tip that listeners can implement today in their musical lives? Yes, I do. So you're playing a concerto in a few weeks,

Starting point is 00:49:30 and I am as well, or a concert like this. and you're like i want it to go really well what would i do well i'll tell you what to do first of all you have to get your instrument out so i'll have to use my own advice at this point okay you have to get your instrument out now and what you should do is go through the piece especially the really hard technical passages or even the entire piece like at half tempo or below like extreme tempo so especially if it's a technical piece and that means if you have eighth notes like I mean go through it like all the way through like as quarter notes and and do this especially if you if you're memorizing the piece because what

Starting point is 00:50:27 you'll realize is that that's really hard to do note by note and it's a really funny thing to to attempt because you'll realize oh shoot i'm just playing this like automatically but i don't actually know what the notes are and um and that that should be an interesting exercise anthony i'm very grateful that you took the time for you from your busy schedule to talk with me today. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was a lot of fun. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Anthony McGill. And if someone comes to mind that you think might find value and benefit from his message, please share it with them. Tap the little share button you know the box with the arrow in it

Starting point is 00:51:27 and it will pull up all the ways you can share it with them. So that's my actionable tip for today. You can find the show notes for this episode and more information about Anthony as well as resources on mindful and deliberate practice at mindoverfinger.com. As always I would love to see on social media you can find me on instagram and facebook at mind over finger and you can also join the mind over finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger tribe for additional content about deliberate practice and superior performance next week i'll be talking to amy beth horman violinist teacher conservatory mom and host of the podcast beyond the triangle we discuss guiding young musicians toward a professional career and more specifically, the mindsets and

Starting point is 00:52:22 practicing habits they should acquire in order to reach their goals. Also, a huge thank you to all of you who've taken the time to get in touch and tell me how much you like the podcast. You guys are amazing and it means the world to me. Again, thank you and à bientôt! Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 018 Anthony McGill: Focus & Efficiency in Practice & Performance

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