Performance anxiety is common at all levels, and musicians are now catching up with sportsmen and women in acquiring techniques to overcome it. Knowing you’re performing way below your capability is immensely frustrating – here are some resources to help your public performances be as good as the ones you produce in private.

Mark Brafield and Daniel Moult recently gave an RCO workshop on strategies for dealing with performance anxiety, and they’ve made their workshop notes available for download. The notes include a discussion of how performance anxiety arises in the first place, practical techniques to overcome it, and a reading list.

In March 2018 Andrew McCrea, Deputy Director of the RCO, hosted a live webinar with RCO President Martin Baker and Philip Meaden, RCO Director. In it they reflected on RCO initiatives, both current and future, and took questions from the webinar audience. Watch a recording of the webinar, including the Q&A session.

The Northern Ireland International Organ Competition, which takes place between 13th and 15th August in Armagh, has grown into an excellent opportunity for organists age 21 and under. This year there are increased prize funds, and recital opportunities for senior category prize winners at a range of international venues. The competition has been a stepping stone for many young players to establish their careers and take the next step forward. Dame Gillian Weir chairs the jury, and entries for this year close in July.

Dr Francis Jackson’s work at York Minster, coupled with his activities as a world famous recitalist, made it impossible for him to devote regular hours to composition. That he has composed such a large body of work in a variety of different genres is testimony to his talent as a composer and his devotion to the craft.

In this article originally appearing in the RCO Journal of 2017, Philip Moore analyses Jackson’s compositional techniques, his approach to word-setting, and gives some suggestions on the interpretation and registration of Jackson’s choral and liturgical works.

In this short video Judith Kleinman outlines the principles of Alexander Technique for musicians, and in particular organists.

Mental Skills Training (MST) is now taught as a matter of routine in conservatoires and music colleges, but it can help musicians at all levels increase learning speed, combat performance anxiety, and realise their full potential. Daniel Moult introduces visualisation which as part of practice technique.

Sir George Thomas Smart (1776–1867) is not as well known to the general musical public as he should be, not least because he was the first British musician to wield a baton over his forces and the first to take sole charge of a musical performance. The famous and misleading quote in the title is one of the most widely known anecdotes from his life, but this humorous aside does not reflect Smart’s attitude to the organ and its music in 1851, nor his reforming zeal.

Listen to the Ede & Ravenscroft Recital which closed the College’s 2018 Conferment of Diplomas ceremony, performed by Peter Stevens, Assistant Master of Music, Westminster Cathedral, who played music by Jean Guillou, JS Bach, Maurice Durufle and Max Reger.