My friends mental health is declining bc of a band concert and I don’t know if I should talk to him or not

This is rly long, but I’m slightly panicking over this?? So help would be nice please and thank you.

So yesterday my friend (m15) and I (f16) had a band concert (Yes, I know, we’re lame band kids, point and boo). It was specifically a jazz festival, where there were judges. We were set to perform at six thirty pm, and we arrived at the festival around eight am. The two of us are just filled to the brim with anxiety at every moment and ESPECIALLY over our playing. We’ve both been playing around six-ish years and are currently in both the advanced and intermediate bands in school (other than jazz ofc), but performing is rly stressful for the two of us. We’re both also not very social, it’s why we gravitated towards eachother, we were both the shy loners of the group. We do talk to other people in band, and outside of it, but we just GET eachother in a way that matters yk? Not in a relationship way, before you start thinking that, my aroace self would rly rather not and he’s gay, but we understand each other’s anxiety more than other people do. As kids who stayed home schooled a little longer than everyone else, we both aren’t very social people, though if I’m being honest with myself I guess I’m a little more social/confident than he is. We had done the same online program, and would reply to each other’s messages on the discussion boards. We did band in-person, and while I didn’t know it was him, he apparently knew it was me online, we never really talked then. I actually had wanted to talk to him, make a friend who understood that struggle of homeschooling, I never built up the confidence to talk to him until this year, late October. He sat alone at lunch, and I hung out with some nerds who I wasn’t really friends with? But we had similar interests so I sat with them. The jazz festival before this we ended up talking briefy and he was nice to me, so our next school day I asked if I could sit with him and the rest is history. We now have other friends, who are really apart of the same friend group, but we both usually hang out with different people within the group, so while we talk almost everyday, it’s not like we only have eachother right now.

I’ll start getting to the point. The entire day we were making jokes about how bad our performance would go (“we’re jazz pathetic”, “there’s only four other bands in our category (intermediate jazz) and we’ll somehow place sixth”, etc). I don’t think either of us genuinely thought it would go awful, we definitely didn’t think we were getting a trophy, but we (or at least I) thought we would do ok. Which is a statement that immediately gets rescinded because it went awful. I play flute (which isn’t rly a jazz instrument, but it’s the one I play) and was put on a mic so you could hear me. I panicked about being on mic before our set and I think my stress about it kinda transfered to him.

My friend plays bass…you know, the most important instrument in jazz? The one that holds the band together? If bass gets off, then everything is off, and that is exactly what happened. He got nervous and rushed the song, with half the band following him, the other half staying in tempo, creating rhythmic tearing. It was our last song too, not a great thing to leave in the judges ears. I don’t blame him at all, as it was stressful for me too, thought there’s a lot more pressure on him than I for the performance.

When we were being critiqued afterwards, our teacher went to go talk to him. I don’t know what was said, but it didn’t seem to help, whatever it was. I was distressed bc of the performance, and in turn didn’t immediately go over to him, I rushed off to the commons where we had our stuff so I could pack up. (I was trying not to cry bc I also got lectured,(for moving away from the mic, which I didn’t even realize I did? It wasn’t even really a lecture, though in the moment it felt like it was), but in turn I pushed him aside to focus on me, who didn’t rly need to be focused on. I packed up my instrument and went to go talk to him. He seemed down, understandable, but was still talking, so I took that as a good sign. He’s hugely a people pleaser, so he could just think it would be rude to ignore me, but he also tends to shut down when overwhelmed, so it’s a coin toss. I asked him how he felt about the concert and he relayed in detail about how badly he did. It also didn’t help that he hadn’t even mentioned which song he messed up in, and I went “oh, milestones?”. It just made him feel bad that I could tell which one, comments getting worse and worse. Talking about quiting, and how he was just the worst player (which, he’s not? He plays in the advanced symphony in our town bc his conductor said he was too advanced for the youth one. He’s the only one who’s under twenty who plays in there.)

Our conversation was cut off short bc I had to get to the bus, his parents were taking him home, and I just ended up sitting with another friend (m15) who was in the jazz band above us.

When I got home and had service I texted a mutual friend of ours (f15) asking if she could check in on him. I didn’t think he would want to talk to me, as I was there and knew everything that was going on. She agreed and asked for details and I vaguely gave them (she’s friends with a LOT of other jazz kids, she would’ve heard about it sooner or later). She messaged him and he didn’t reply. He’s REALLY good about getting back to people quickly, unless he’s asleep, so this was a slight cause for concern. He even changed his discord pfp(which is where we talk) so we KNEW he was getting the messages. After around an hour of her intermittently texting me to say he still hadn’t responded, I decided I would text him.

Through discord, I messaged him this;
“Hey, just checking in
It seemed like you were going to spiral and I just want to know if your ok?
I’m kind of worried
And I don’t mean like ok, ok, but not scary bad?”

He replied instantly, reassuring me that while he wasn’t doing good, he just needed to take out some anger (playing video games) and then he’d be alright. He then thanked me for checking in on him, saying that most people don’t think to do that for him. I thought he wanted to be left alone, so I said that I was worried so ofc I would text him and not to thank me, before getting a text from mutual friend a minute later. She said he just replied saying that he said he wanted space and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid, which is a possibility I didn’t even think about. He went on dnd and changed his status on discord to something along the lines of ‘currently going through a wave of mental instability’. I decided that if he wanted to he’d say more, but that since he went on dnd after we talked he probably wanted to be left alone.

Today I was feeling kind of down, and didnt talk to anyone, though I did want to. Its late by now, but all of my friends stay up into the ungodly hours of the night, so I’ll probably text someone after I make this post. Though I didnt talk to anyone, I religiously checked discord to see if anyone messaged me, and noticed his status changed again. Its still says the same thing now, “s*ssy”. And I want to say something. I want to tell him he’s not, cause he’s being self deprecating and that’s not good, but I know the our mutual friend has probably been texting him all day, even while he’s been on dnd. I don’t even know if he thinks of us as friends, and if saying something to him would be out of line. We hang out at lunch and during any band events and we used to be the only one the other would talk to outside of class, but I’m still just afraid that he’s humoring me and is too nice to tell me to leave. I know I’m getting in my head about this, but Im really worried about him and cherish his friendship.

TL;DR: A friend of mine messed up at our concert, which was being judged, and is really down about it. I want to talk to him, but are unsure if giving him space is the better option.

What are your thoughts? Any advice helps if I’m being honest. I have to go to school tomorrow and I’ll see him, so even if it’s not advice on texting him now, advice for tomorrow could be helpful as well. I share like half my classes with him so I’ll be seeing him a lot.