Stage fright is one of the human psy­che’s deep­est fears. Lau­rence Olivi­er learned to adapt to it, as have actors Salma Hayek and Hugh Grant. Musi­cians such as George Har­ri­son and Adele have bat­tled it and learned to cope. Oth­ers nev­er do: In 1973, Pitts­burgh Pirates All-Star pitch­er Steve Blass sud­den­ly could no longer find the strike zone; his career end­ed soon after. Sur­veys in the Unit­ed States repeat­ed­ly rank pub­lic speak­ing as one of the top fears, affect­ing up to 74 per­cent of people.

Sara Solovitch stud­ied piano as a young child and fell in love with music. At ten, she played Bach and Mozart in her home­town’s annu­al music fes­ti­val, but was over­whelmed by fear. As a teen, she attend­ed East­man School of Music, where stage fright led her to give up aspi­ra­tions of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al pianist. In her late fifties, Sara gave her­self a one-year dead­line to tame per­for­mance anx­i­ety and play before an audi­ence. She resumed music lessons, while explor­ing med­i­ta­tion, expo­sure ther­a­py, cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, biofeed­back, beta block­ers, and oth­er reme­dies. She per­formed in air­ports, hos­pi­tals, and retire­ment homes before rent­ing a pub­lic hall and per­form­ing for fifty guests on her six­ti­eth birthday.

Using her own jour­ney as inspi­ra­tion, Solovitch has writ­ten a thought­ful and insight­ful exam­i­na­tion of the myr­i­ad caus­es of stage fright and the equal­ly diverse ways to over­come it, and a trib­ute to pur­su­ing per­son­al growth at any age.