Anat Cohen Quotes

It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.

From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you're the entertainment for some people that night, it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live.

My act is always a work in progress. I pray I have a bad day before a show.

I know what it feels like to walk out in front of a sold-out crowd of a thousand people that are there for you, and how good that feels, but as an opener, you just have to train yourself to think that it's going to be harder.

Above all, ignore the audience.

There's variables at every single gig. I look forward to those every night. We have a lot of things that happen in our show, a lot of people from the outside watching the show might think it's one schtick after the next. We promised ourselves we have to be there mentally. We have to be aware. We are forced to be aware.

I stand on stage hoping to give good energy to the audience, but if I cannot give good energy anymore, I will have to leave right away.

I don't prepare for a live show.

During a big rock show, you can flub a few things and nobody will hear it, because it gets buried under everything else.

My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage, and straight onto the stage. Two minutes, and I am on the stage. That way, in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends.

When I'm gigging, there's an uneasy shift when I pull a puppet out. People look at me aghast and I feel I have about 20 seconds to win them over. You even get the prejudice among other people in your own profession.

If you can handle a nightclub audience successfully, you can handle anything.

Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

Some bands blow it before they even play. The most important moment of any show is when a band walks out with the red amp lights glowing, the flashlight that shows each performer the way to his spot on the stage. It's crucial not to blow it. It sets the tempo of the show; it affects everyone's perception of the band.

Before I go on stage I pretend that everyone loves me.

Once I get out onstage, it's the same sort of basic production that it is anywhere else. But I might be a little bit aware that there might be people I know out there, who wondered where I was.

There's no second chance on stage, and I was trained to make the most of my first chance.

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

Every audition is different, but I get incredibly nervous and insecure and worked up for however long I have to prep - that's when I get to spin. But you're not allowed to spin once you enter the room. Doubt really can't enter the room when you're auditioning - unless it's part of the character.

I've done a lot of stage in my life, but I never had to dominate a stage for three hours.

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

I mean, you still can't jump offstage and go read a book. But I'm getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.