Wearable monitoring of stage fright in professional musicians

We present a wearable system approach to investigate changes in stage fright in professional musicians under realistic performance conditions. Towards this goal, we monitored stage fright in a young professional cellist during three consecutive performances of a skill-demanding piece in front of a professional audience. The wearable system measured ECG and body movement at multiple locations. We found that performance improvements can be measured in dynamics of the cellist’s bowing movements and in heart rate. Our system could be highly beneficial in a musician’s education to assess progress in stage fright training.