“You don’t hear much about the musical equivalent of the sports psychologist either, although musical performance is as physically exacting as any sport, and competitive performance is a reality of life for many young musicians,” says Michael Dervan from The Irish Times. Dr Jaime Diaz-Ocejo will return to Dublin International Piano Festival once again to give seminars on performance in music. 

Dr Jaime Diaz-Ocejo is a Chartered Psychologist by the British Psychological Society (BPS). As a former pole-vaulter, he was preselected for the Olympic Games in Barcelona 1992. Jaime has worked as a performance psychologist with athletes in a variety of sports (i.e. BMW-Sauber Formula 1 team, Moto GP, Andalusian Federation in Athletics in Spain, golf, tennis, football and combat sports). Jaime has been a Sports Psychologist at ASPIRE Academy in Qatar since 2008. His role is to deliver performance psychology services to young athletes, which encompasses psychological assessment, mental training and hands-on applied work at the Academy and during training camps abroad. Since 2013, Jaime has delivered performance psychology seminars to promising pianists from around the world at the DIPF. This work focuses on managing stage fright, mental training and identifying/developing key psychological characteristics to achieve excellence in music. As Michael Dervan puts it ‘Jaime Diaz-Ocejo’s seminars in Dublin about student performance profiling and performing under pressure prove fascinating’ (The Irish Times). Jaime holds a BSc in Physical Education at Montclair State College, USA (1993), a BSc in Sport Science at the University of Granada, Spain (1997), a MSc in Sport Psychology at UNED University, Spain (2000), a PhD. in Sport Psychology at the University of Malaga, Spain (2006) and a BSc in Psychology at the Open University, UK (2013).