Cellist.
Researcher.
Performance Coach.
Welcome to my website: I’m so glad you’re here!
© Daniel Lopez
© Daniel Lopez
I’m Bex Herman — cellist, researcher and performance coach.
My work sits at the intersection of high-level performance, cutting-edge scientific research, and applied coaching — grounded in lived experience, and built for the realities of the stage.
As a performer, I understand the joys and demands of the stage.
As a researcher, I question and refine how we understand performance.
As a coach, I translate both into practical, usable tools.
The result is a way of working that is:
→ grounded in real performance experience;
→ informed by rigorous research;
→ and directly applicable when it counts.
About me
After years working as a professional musician, I became fascinated by a curious tension:
Music is supposed to feel alive, human, and real – yet performers are so often trained to chase control, correctness, and perfection.
Through my playing, teaching, research and coaching, I explore a way of thinking about performing that acknowledges the demands of a fiercely competitive profession, while creating space for connection, trust, presence and playfulness.
I'm not especially interested in helping musicians become perfect.
I'm interested in helping them become free enough to play the music they already know how to make.
Everything I do—whether I'm performing, teaching, researching or coaching—is really an exploration of one question:
What helps us feel present, free and joyful, even when the stakes are high?
Work with Bex
Performer
© Sussie Ahlburg
I'm not interested in flawless performances. Technique and preparation matter, but the performances I remember most aren't the perfect ones—they're the ones that feel honest, generous and alive. I perform because I love those moments of connection, where musician and listener inhabit the same musical space, if only for a few moments.
Researcher and PhD Candidate
© Flourish (RNCM)
My research challenges traditional, pathology-based models of performance anxiety and offers a new, evidence-based framework for reconceptualising it as a normal and adaptive response to the environments musicians train and work in.
Performance Coaching and Workshops
© National Children’s Orchestra
Through 1:1 coaching and workshops, I support musicians to navigate performance anxiety, and perform with greater confidence, freedom and consistency under pressure. Grounded in research, shaped by lived experience.
Contact Bex
Interested in working together? Pop your details here and I’ll be in touch ASAP!