You’ve got to remember that what you’re doing is spiritual and soulful – not that it’s religious, as such, but the connection between you and the audience is circular. You send out the energy and they give it back to you. It’s like your performance wakes them up and gives them permission to lose their minds for a couple of hours, and they don’t have to worry about anything else. People walk into a room with their nice clothes on, and they want to go a bit crazy but don’t want to embarrass themselves. You’ve got to give them permission to freak out, and wake up the demon inside. Once you transmit that wild vibe into the audience, they lose it and don’t care. I can feel the energy before I run onstage – sometimes the crowd feels like a giant keg of gunpowder and I am the match.

When you rehearse in Tiny Habits, you are both training muscle memory and rewiring your brain to remember. And you can drill and wire in a habit quickly if you have an effective celebration.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.

Next, make sure to amplify, rather than suppress, weak signals. Imagine standing in front of a crowd and trying to be heard.

At the end of her life, in the 1860s, when she had become the Grande Dame of Champagne, Barbe-Nicole wrote to a great-grandchild, “The world is in perpetual motion, and we must invent the things of tomorrow. One must go before others, be determined and exacting, and let your intelligence direct your life. Act with audacity.” Act with audacity! In other words, play to win.