Pre Show Nerves

My partner belongs to the BGSO (Birmingham Gay Symphony Orchestra), which is a community orchestra. As with a lot of them music is a hobby not a profession & quite often they all get pre show nerves even though they sound good. Most of the time what holds them back is confidence in themselves & their talent & they are generally relieved when the concert is over & they can reflect on their performance which is generally good, although they will pick it to pieces on occasion. Quite often though pre show nerves are a good thing they get you through where as over confidence can quite often make things go to pot soon as something happens that isn't quite right as you have made no contingency plan. I empathise with them, I do public speaking on occasion, this I find nerve racking too but I find that when I get nervous I talk a lot & that tends to get me through quite well. Though last year it did fail me once & very publicly at Birmingham Pride when I was up on stage trying to welcome on stage acts that were appearing later, in fact I think it was over confidence that nothing was going to wrong mixed with the nerves & a bit of the phew I've conducted my first handfasting & it went well combined together, so more than just one thing created my downfall. But pre show nerves got me a date which had all those nerves running through it & almost 8 years later I'm still with him so good things can come out of it. I also find that it is the same with pre exam nerves to. We get nervous for a reason, to realise we can & do occasionally make mistakes we find the solution to the problem sometimes before it arises or even if it didn't happen at all & everything went perfect. So let your nerves out but don't let them take hold of you treat them with respect & they will serve you well. So good luck to the BGSO I'm sure you will be fabulous as always