Troublesome auditions, conductors and orchestras - with Evan Williams

Evan Williams is a professional French Horn player in an operatic orchestra in Germany and part of the Zenways sangha. Aside his concert appearances, Evan is also a music therapist and passionate about influencing people’s health in positive way through music. He came to meditation after being inspired by his brother to stop reading about it and actually do it! His first serious encounter was on a 10-day Vipassana retreat where he found a sense of contentment arising from within for the first time.

In this interview, Evan talks about how the time spent in his early career doing auditions for months on end taught him the value of staying in the present moment and maintaining a ‘beginners mind’. He goes on to discuss how troublesome auditions, conductors, composers, children and traffic have combined in various ways to produce many fantastic opportunities to practice mindfulness and Zen.

At one point, Evan talks about the effectiveness of a Zen energy practice called ‘ah-un breathing’ at helping him pause, centre and focus before performing after a particularly blustery journey to a concert. As an accompaniment to this episode, I’ve recorded the ah-un breathing practice for you to try (click here). It’s a very powerful way of energising what’s known in Japanese as the hara (the guts) as a way of grounding and generating a kind of centred, focused power.

Evan mentions the book “Practical Zen: Meditation and Beyond” by Julian Daizan Skinner (where the ah-un mediation is described), which can be purchased here (or on Amazon).