Nutrition and Performing
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Fellow musicians (and especially fellow organists),

    I am performing tonight, which makes this a bit of a delay, but I've always wondered what the best diet for the day/proximity of a performance is? Any weird habits out there? Nutritional advice? Here's a few of my thoughts so far:

    - I don't have time for a good meal before most performances (I may fit in a baloney sandwich today)
    - I abstain from alcohol for a week prior, but that's mostly to get in shape so I can fit into my tuxedo!
    - I've been told to eat lots of green vegetables, although this week that's meant V8 Fusion Juice.
    - Last night I ate a pizza (as in the whole thing), the wisdom of which is yet to be determined.

    So let me know what works for you! I feel like this is a very under-considered aspect of the musical profession.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    And if you're near the Detroit area, come to St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Grosse Pointe Woods for a concert of African-American organ and choir music at 7:30 tonight!
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    propranolol
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    My First Friday Concerts are at 11:15 am every month
    (except during Lent when replaced by Stations of the Cross).
    I ignore food from the Thu post-choir-rehearsal-and-concert-runthrough-snack
    through to the Fri early afternoon; there is no time ...
    7 am rise-shower-dress-commute, 8 am Mass with school,
    9 am parish office tasks, prep for concert (proofread program and notes, print, arrange scores),
    prep for Benediction, 11:15 concert, 12 nn Benediction, cleanup church.
    In the 1990s, while a member of a religious community,
    one day one of the brothers said to me "Ed, you are a machine." and I responded "Yep." YMMV.
    Best wishes, and give us a post-mortem!
  • Erik P
    Posts: 152
    .
  • Ken of Sarum
    Posts: 406
    Actually, this is a very serious subject. The answers should be rather obvious for those concerning medical reasons. However, this is also important during Lent as well. I am not an expert on this subject, but I have read several well respected articles and research studies on this very subject and especially how it relates to performing artists, mystics and prophets in the Bible. Also, lets think about Jesus when he sojourned in the desert! Like I said, I am no expert, but there seems to be a relationship between fasting and prayer, fasting and artistic endeavors and fasting and mystics; especially concerning certain brain wave functions.

    This, perhaps, would make an excellent article for the CMAA Journal! Let's hear from those scholars and doctors among us on this subject.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    There's also a relationship between fasting and fainting, fasting and blinding headaches, and dehydration and not being able to sing or make out the sheet music. There's a big difference between not being bloated with food or water, and starving.

    If anybody wants to make a spiritual thing out of fasting for music, fine. Then he should do the spiritual thing and get some spiritual direction, not just fast haphazardly.

    I would bet that musicians have much the same sort of requirements as athletes in training, except that calorie intake wouldn't have to be quite so high. We are engaging in aerobic exercise, so we need to have good reserves of energy already in the tank from the night before.

    I have noticed that my vocal health, as well as my general health and my allergies, has improved markedly since I started taking more Vitamin D; and Vitamin B-12 helps energy a lot, as is well known. Vitamins are certainly not a cure-all, but having a sufficient supply of them does help your body to run as designed.
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 762
    It's particularly important for singers, who need to support, control breathing and focus. So: cut the dairy products, caffiene and alcohol in the approach to performance. Of course, what you consume after the concert's another matter!
  • Ken of Sarum
    Posts: 406
    Maureen, I hope you didn't misunderstand me in my above statement. Of course no one should "fast" to any extreme. Each person and their body is different and can handle fasting differently. Many people think a Biblical fast is an almost absolute abstinence of food, but it is not. Fasting should be only a moderate lessening in what you normal eat. Practically speaking, from what I understand, the more you eat, the more blood the body sends to the digestive process and away from the brain. If this is correct, then gorging one's self before a concert or performance is not a wise thing to do and neither is it prudent to starve one's self in screw up your blood sugar. All thing in moderation.
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    The only total fast I can think of in Christian tradition is the fast on Good Friday. All other fasts are usually either one-meal-only fasts (the meal sometimes eaten after an evening liturgy) akin to the Ash Wednesday fast in the West, fasts from specific foods--meat, animal products, etc., or ascetic fasts. Ascetic fasts are fasts where you do not eat to satisfaction--so you eat throughout the day, but never enough to completely erase the feeling of hunger in your stomach. This last one is what I think Ken of Sarum was talking about.
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