What Performing Is Really About

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Parish Center for the Arts in Westford to take part in a show my sister put together called Short Songs and Tall Tales. I went into it thinking I was just helping out and maybe enjoying a fun night of music and storytelling. I left realizing I had been reminded of something I should never have forgotten.

The show itself was a mix of songs and stories drawn from real life, family history, and everyday experiences that most people wouldn’t expect to hear turned into music. Some of the material was hilarious, like “Colonoscopy Song” or “Miss You When You’re Gone” which is about her husband’s enjoyment of having the house to himself while she is away. Other moments like “I Love You Mommy” were more reflective, but everything was delivered through a warm, human lens that made it instantly relatable.

What stood out immediately was how engaged the audience was from beginning to end. The room was packed and sold out, but more importantly, it was emotionally full in a way that’s harder to describe but easy to feel. People weren’t just watching the show, they were part of it, responding, reacting, and leaning in the entire time.

At one point in the show, I performed a solo piece, “Sam Hall,” from the album 1000 Years of Popular Music by Richard Thompson. I approached it as an opportunity to bring the audience into the experience through participation and call-and-response. They responded immediately, and what came back from the room was just as important as what I played.

That moment was fun, and the entire event was also revealing in a deeper way. Even though I’ve performed countless times, something about this felt different from the usual experience of playing a song well. It became clear that what mattered most was not the execution, but what was happening between everyone in the room.

The Purpose of Music That We Forgot

If you’re a serious musician like me, you’ve probably been trained to think about music in terms of skill and mastery.  You think about technique, harmony, phrasing, time feel, tone, and vocabulary because those are the things we spend years developing.  All of that matters, but it’s not the point, and confusing those two things is where a lot of musicians quietly lose their way.

What my sister created that night stripped everything down to what music is actually for. It wasn’t about impressing anyone or demonstrating ability; it was about creating a shared experience where everyone felt included, connected, and part of something larger than themselves.

That kind of experience goes beyond what people usually mean when they talk about “connecting with the audience.” The traditional idea still implies that the performer is doing something to the audience, as if the connection moves in one direction. What happened in that room was something more mutual, where everyone was connected to everyone else at the same time.

What We’ve Lost as a Musical Culture

This idea becomes even clearer when you step back and look at how music has functioned throughout human history. For most of our existence, music wasn’t something you consumed passively, it was something you participated in directly with other people. Families gathered around instruments, communities sang together, and music was woven into everyday life as a shared activity.

Today, that has largely been replaced by watching, scrolling, and comparing. We listen to music alone, often through headphones, and experience it as content rather than as a communal act. That shift might seem normal, but it has fundamentally changed our relationship to music in ways we don’t always recognize.

Research in neuroscience and psychology backs this up in a very real way. Studies have shown that singing and making music together increases oxytocin levels, which are associated with trust and bonding, while also lowering stress hormones like cortisol. At the same time, participants often experience synchronized heart rates and breathing patterns, which literally brings people into alignment with one another.

In other words, when people make music together, they become more connected not just emotionally, but physically and biologically. This helps explain why traditions like the sacred chanting / kirtan that I sometimes lead and communal singing exist across so many cultures and have lasted for thousands of years. It’s not just about the music itself, but about what the music allows people to experience together.

Why This Hit Me Personally

I’ve felt this directly in kirtan settings, where the musical material is often very simple but the collective experience is powerful. When people sit together, repeat phrases, and breathe in rhythm, something shifts in the room that goes beyond technique or complexity. The music becomes a vehicle for participation, and that participation becomes the point.

This is where the experience in Westford really hit me on a personal level. I take music very seriously, and I’ve built a life around developing skill, understanding, and depth as a musician. My sister even introduced me as someone whose interest in music borders on obsession, which is pretty accurate.

That level of seriousness can be a strength, but it also comes with a hidden cost. Over time, it becomes easy to think that the purpose of music is to play well, improve constantly, and refine every detail. Without realizing it, the focus shifts from what the music is doing for others to what it says about you as the performer.

This is where ego quietly enters the picture, even if it doesn’t look like arrogance. It shows up as self-consciousness, overthinking, and a constant internal evaluation of whether what you’re doing is good enough. The attention turns inward, and as a result, the connection outward begins to weaken.

This is something Ronan Guilfoyle pointed toward in a lesson I had with him. I don’t remember the exact question I asked, but I remember the direction of his answer very clearly. It wasn’t about adding more complexity or thinking harder, it was about getting out of the way and allowing the music to do its job.  He said “the music is not about you.”

The Lesson Hidden in Plain Sight

What my sister did so effectively in her show was embody that idea in a very real and practical way. She was willing to be vulnerable, to share personal stories, and to approach the performance with humor and honesty. That combination created an environment where the audience felt comfortable responding in kind.

Once that kind of environment is established, everything changes. The performance stops being something people watch and becomes something they actively experience. The barrier between performer and audience dissolves, and what’s left is a shared moment that belongs to everyone in the room.

For musicians, this has some important implications that are easy to overlook. All the things we work on, like technique, theory, and vocabulary, are still important and worth pursuing. The problem is not that we value these things, but that we often place them at the top of the hierarchy instead of seeing them as tools.

When those tools are not serving something larger, they can actually start to work against us. They can lead to overthinking, tension, and a kind of disconnection that makes even technically strong performances feel flat. The irony is that the more we focus on playing well for its own sake, the less impact the performance often has.

A Better Question to Ask on Every Gig

A more useful question to ask is not “How well did I play?” but “Did I create something people could be part of?” That shift changes everything about how you approach a performance in real time. It influences your choices, your interaction, and your willingness to leave space for others to engage.

It also changes how you evaluate success after the fact. Instead of focusing on mistakes or technical details, you begin to notice how the room responded and how people felt. In many cases, that ends up being a much more accurate measure of what actually mattered.

There’s a hard truth here that a lot of musicians resist. You can be highly skilled and still deliver a performance that people forget almost immediately. At the same time, you can be relatively simple in your playing and create an experience that people remember for years.

What people remember is not your substitutions or your technical facility. They remember how it felt to be there and what the experience meant to them. If that feeling is strong, the details of what you played become secondary.

If You’re a Musician Reading This

This experience in Westford was not just a nice moment or a successful show. It was a reminder of something fundamental that can easily get lost over time. Music is not the end goal, it is the means through which something more important happens.

That means every time I perform, I need to be aware of what I’m actually trying to create. It’s not about proving anything or demonstrating ability, even though those instincts can creep in. It’s about inviting people into a shared experience and allowing the music to serve that purpose.

If you’re a musician reading this, the takeaway is not to abandon your craft or stop striving to improve. The work you put into your playing still matters and always will. The shift is in recognizing what that work is ultimately for and making sure it serves something beyond yourself.

When you do that, something changes in a very real way. You stop trying to prove yourself and start creating something people actually want to be part of. And when that happens, music becomes what it was always meant to be.

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