Mindful Music Pedagogy Podcast Mindful Music Pedagogy

This is the final installment in a 3-part interview I did with pianist Emily Trapp Jenkins. If you haven’t listened to Part 2, you may do so here.
Ms. Jenkins is a collaborative pianist at Arkansas State University, the worship leader at First United Methodist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and is the host of the Gaining Proficiency podcast where she interviews other musicians about their personal stories.
In Part 3, we pick up with Emily describing an injury that occurred just days before her doctoral school audition. She shares her struggle to mentally and physically overcome her obstacles and talks about her successful career today. As Emily and I talked, the word that kept coming to my mind was “redemption.” You will love hearing the ending of Emily’s story. Enjoy.

This is the 2nd in a 3-part interview I did with pianist Emily Trapp Jenkins. If you haven’t listened to Part 1, you may do so here.
Ms. Jenkins is a collaborative pianist at Arkansas State University, the worship leader at First United Methodist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and is the host of the Gaining Proficiency podcast where she interviews other musicians about their personal stories.
In Part 2 Emily Trapp Jenkins discusses her experiences during her masters degree and shares her honest feelings about failure. We talk about the stigma that often comes with admitting to experiencing Musical Performance Anxiety, especially to our fellow peers. We discuss the pervasive use of coping tools—good and bad—that musicians use to help them deal with this anxiety. Emily vulnerably shares her lowest point in her musical career: her injury. Warning: this episode includes a discussion of suicide.

This is the 1st in a 3-part interview I did with pianist Emily Trapp Jenkins. Ms. Jenkins is a collaborative pianist at Arkansas State University, is the worship leader at First United Methodist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and is the host of the Gaining Proficiency podcast where she interviews other musicians about their personal stories.
In this segment, we learn about Emily’s early musical experiences, her transition in high school to a high-demand teacher, her undergraduate experience, and we conclude this segment with the end of her first year of her masters program. As her story unfolds, we discuss Musical Performance Anxiety and spend some time considering the idea of timing: How do we as performers navigate performing on someone else’s timetable (school, juries, competitions, recitals)? Do we write ourselves off as performers if we don’t meet these goals? Do we as teachers sometimes write students off if they don’t meet certain goals?

In this episode, I discuss the tension musicians face with practice/life balance and offer my own strategy for learning music quickly and effectively.

The MMP Podcast is back! In this episode I talk about my time in Taiwan and spend some time discussing assumptions.

A brief update regarding the podcast. Things have been very busy these days, but much of my time has been devoted to speaking, interviewing, and preparing for various aspects of MMP, so that makes me happy! Stay tuned this fall for more episodes and a regular podcast schedule.