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Dr Berenice Beverley Zammit is a Performance Expert, Consultant and Coach. She is also a Chartered Psychologist, researcher, violinist and lecturer.

Performance Expert & Consultant
Chartered Psychologist | Violinist | PhD

Helping musicians, performers, athletes, and organisations understand and optimise performance under pressure through evidence-based consultancy, education, and coaching. Her work involves consulting with performing arts and sports institutions by providing expert advice and solutions, and coaching performing artists and athletes in optimising performance through strategies based on scientific research. Berenice offers tailored one-to-one coaching sessions, workshops and talks, to musicians, dancers, actors and athletes. Berenice lectures in Performance Psychology, Health and Wellbeing in the Performing Arts, Healthy Musicianship, Performance Education, and Research Methods. Her area of expertise is in performance optimisation, encompassing pre-performance routines, mental and physical strategies for performance, and health and wellbeing in the performing arts.

08/10/2026

You know you can play it.
So why can it suddenly feel harder when someone is listening?

The practice room can feel completely different from an audition, concert or examination.

You know the music.

You’ve done the work.

And yet, when the stakes rise, you may suddenly notice your hands, your breathing, your memory, or the possibility of making a mistake.

That doesn't necessarily mean you've lost confidence.

And it doesn't necessarily mean you haven't prepared enough.

It's the conditions that have changed.

What happens next can be much more specific, and that's one of the things I find most interesting about performance.

05/10/2026

Staying in the zone can become a problem.

You’re playing well. Things feel automatic. You’re not analysing every note.

Then you suddenly realise:

“I’m really in the zone”.

From that moment, your attention can start to turn back towards your own performance.

"Am I still in it?"
"Was that good?"
"Am I still playing well?"

That shift can matter because attention that was absorbed in the task is now partly occupied with monitoring how the performance is going.

It doesn’t mean that self-monitoring is always a problem. The interesting question is when it starts to interfere with the performance itself.

01/10/2026

Do you think you need to feel calm before you perform?

It seems logical.

If you're nervous, tense or physically activated, it can feel as though something has gone wrong.

So the instinct is often to try to change it:

Calm down.
Relax.
Control your breathing.
Get back to how you feel when you're practising.

But here's the interesting question:

Does feeling calm actually tell you whether you're ready to perform?

You can feel completely calm and still have a difficult performance.

And you can feel nervous, physically activated, and perform extremely well.

So how we feel before performing doesn't dictate how we actually perform.

Let that sink in.

28/09/2026

We often talk about confidence as though it has to come first:
First you become confident. Then you perform well.

But it doesn't always work that way.

You can feel nervous, uncertain or physically activated and still perform effectively.

The more useful question may be:

“What do I need to do to perform well, even when I don't feel completely confident?”

That might mean knowing where to put your attention, recovering quickly after a mistake, or continuing to make musical decisions instead of monitoring yourself.

Sometimes confidence develops afterwards:

“I felt the pressure. I performed anyway. And I handled it.”

You don't necessarily have to wait until you feel confident to perform.

24/09/2026

One mistake can become much bigger in your mind than it actually was.

You make the mistake.

Then you think about it.

Did they notice?

Why did I do that?

Don't do it again.

And while you're thinking about what just happened, you're also thinking about the next passage, your hands, your sound, and whether you'll make another mistake.

The performance hasn't stopped.

But your attention has moved backwards.

This is one reason why recovering from mistakes is something worth training, not simply trying to eliminate mistakes altogether.

The next moment of the performance is still there.

21/09/2026

One of the first things performers sometimes notice when a performance situation becomes more demanding is not a technical mistake.

It is a change in attention.

You become aware of your hands.

Your breathing.

Your timing.

The movement you normally don't think about.

The passage coming up.

The person listening.

The things that usually happen as part of the performance can suddenly become objects of attention.

And that distinction matters.

A change in attention does not necessarily mean that the technique has disappeared. The skill may still be there, but you are accessing it under different conditions.

This is why preparing for performance needs to involve more than simply making the technique more secure.

We also need to consider what happens when attention changes.

Can you continue to access a well-learned skill without needing to consciously manage every part of it?

That is a different training question — and an important one.

17/09/2026

One question performers often ask is: “Why can I do this in practice, but not when it matters?”

It is easy to assume that the answer must be technical, that something simply isn't secure enough yet.

Sometimes that is the case.

But sometimes the skill itself hasn't changed. It's the conditions in which the skill is being used which have.

The presence of an audience, evaluation, consequences or simply the awareness of being watched can change the experience of performing.

That is why understanding inconsistent performance sometimes requires looking beyond the moment where something goes wrong, and asking what has changed in the situation around it.

14/09/2026

Practice gives us something that performance doesn't: the opportunity to stop.

You can repeat a passage, correct something, start again and gradually make the performance more secure.

In performance, the music keeps moving.

This means that being able to do something successfully in practice isn't necessarily the same as being able to do it when there is no opportunity to stop and reset.

The skills overlap, but the demands are not identical.

Preparing for performance isn't therefore only about making something better. It is also about being able to continue when things don't go exactly as planned.

12/09/2026

One thing I've noticed working with performers is how quickly a difficult moment becomes the focus of attention.

A memory lapse, a loss of focus, a technical mistake or a performance that suddenly feels less secure can become the obvious thing to solve.

But the moment we notice isn't necessarily where the problem began.

Sometimes there is more to understand about what was happening before that moment, and how the performance got there in the first place.

What we notice during a performance isn't always the whole story.

08/09/2026

One difficult performance can sometimes have an influence that extends well beyond the performance itself.

After something goes wrong, the next performance can carry some of the memory of that experience with it.

A missed note, a memory lapse, a moment where the performance suddenly felt less secure — these moments can become more noticeable the next time you perform.

You may find yourself listening for the same problem, watching for the same moment, or becoming more aware of something that previously would have passed without much attention.

Nothing has necessarily gone wrong this time.

But the previous experience has changed the context in which the new performance is being experienced.

This is one reason a difficult performance can sometimes feel as though it has followed you into the next one.

The next performance isn't simply a new performance. You also bring with you what you remember about the last one.

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