Making Money as a Cellist
Money, like math, is one of those necessary evils in life we just have to deal with. If it didn’t exist, or we didn’t have to worry about it, what would our lives look like? Probably a lot less stressful.
But I have a feeling many of you would choose to continue on your path to becoming a musician. After all, no one becomes a musician to make money, right?
But thinking about it is a necessary calculus to help us achieve our goal: a job doing what we love that pays a decent salary.
While I love teaching and helping cellists around the world work towards achieving their dream, the one part that everyone has a hard time talking about is money.
So let’s talk turkey. We all have budgets we need to work within—rent, food, gas, tuition. Those are items that you have to pay on a monthly basis. But sometimes we need to look farther down the road. What can we do without today to help ourselves get farther down the path tomorrow?
Taking auditions is an expensive proposition. And if you are a cellist or have to buy an extra seat for your instrument, the costs are even higher. Sometimes you need to turn down work in order to take an audition. We are constantly trying to adjust our daily needs to our future desires.
So why invest in an expensive program? You can totally discover things about your playing by taking a lot of auditions. You will know what you should have practiced, what sort of mental blocks you had, and how you might prepare better. There's a lot you can learn about yourself when you take a lot of auditions.
It took me six years and 17 auditions to figure out how to play well enough to win a position in the LA Philharmonic. The actual financial cost was over $10,000 - and it would be certainly a lot higher in today's numbers.
I don’t want you to have to wait that long or spend that much money.
It’s easy to say "no" when you think about spending a lot of money. But when you do the actual math and consider investing in yourself and your future, you may come up with a different answer.
I still have a few spots open in my Fall Intensive Program, which starts in a week on October 9.
You can read the details here.
If you're wondering whether you're a good candidate for this program, schedule a call, and we can talk it over.