We were lucky to catch up with Bree Ahern recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bree, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

There’s never a dull moment in the life of a freelancer! Earning a full-time living while finding a sustainable work life balance is an ever-constant challenge in a freelancer’s life, and there’s no perfect answer for one individual. Straight out of my master’s degree, I intentionally had a year of saying “yes” to every musical opportunity and taught and performed constantly, without a day off. My goal was to save money and figure out what type of work I was interested in. It was invigorating, illuminating, and incredibly tiring. I was burned out when COVID hit in 2020, which forced me to reassess my goals and priorities. I began to sort my work into three categories – high impact, high pay work (the most desirable), low impact, low pay (the least desirable), high impact, low pay (artistically fulfilling, economically challenging) and low impact, high pay (artistically unfavorable but economically fruitful). Each performing season since identifying these guidelines, I’ve tried to evaluate each opportunity and seek a higher percentage of high impact work. While it hasn’t been perfect, the percentage gets incrementally higher each year and I consider that a success.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a professional cellist who teaches and performs in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metroplexes. I recently relocated to DFW after living in Houston for six years, where I attended graduate school at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and spent the last three years freelancing. I love Houston and maintain close ties with my community there, returning as often as I can to perform. As a newbie in DFW I’ve been focused on connecting with local ensembles and building my private studio, which is a gratifying and ongoing process.

I’ve been playing cello since I was five years old and decided when I was fifteen that I wanted to pursue music professionally. This was a huge shift for me, as my life aim since I could walk and talk was being an artist! One nice thing about the pandemic is that I started painting and selling art again, and this continues to be a strong interest of mine as I pursue my music career.

Pursuing a freelance career as a musician means that I perform in varied capacities – as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player – in a variety of venues – recital halls, outdoor spaces, concert halls – and that I teach in a wide range of settings – as a private cello teacher, a sectional coach, a chamber music coach, etc. I work contractually, which means I accept or decline offers that I receive.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I strive to use music as a way to stay civically engaged and give back to my community. Yes, on its own, playing cello is artistically fulfilling, but sharing it with others is what encourages me to go on despite inevitable obstacles. Sharing music allows me to connect with others, learn about them and their community, and create a sense of belonging. You often hear that music is a universal language, and I would add that it also creates unique opportunities for greater understanding, empathy and impactful social change. Much of my work in Houston focused on bringing classical music to underserved communities in both accessible spaces, such as front porches, libraries, farms, and even gas stations, as well as more inaccessible spaces, such as homeless shelters and prisons. Being directly within these communities has allowed me to learn more about my city and my relationship with it – its history, its people, its needs, its questions. In this way, performing continuously informs my world view and keeps me in thought-provoking dialogue with myself and those around me. It can provide healing for others and a pathway to process difficult emotions and experiences, reminding us all that we need an outlet for expression. I am eager to dig into this work in new ways as I settle into the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a musician are the relationships I’ve built through teaching and performing. Whether those relationships apply to the musicians I collaborate with, the parents and students I work with weekly, the audience members I see regularly or the ones I may never see again, I will always be grateful for music’s ability to connect me with others. I also cannot express how significant pursuing music is for me in terms of self-development. The daily discipline of showing up, being fully present in my practice, and continuously pushing myself to improve is enormously gratifying. There is never an end point in the pursuit of one’s craft, and having this growth mindset has helped me when dealing with failures and frustrations. When I practice, I feel fully present in my mind and in my body. Physically, it is a satisfying and athletic experience to play an instrument, and mentally, it is challenging, forcing me to think critically, solve problems, and develop fortitude in high pressure scenarios. As someone who enjoys many disciplines – music, art, psychology, history, anthropology – I find that pursuing music allows me to engage with all of them in a unique way. It is how I experience the world, process my observations, and express them in artistic form, which I think is pretty amazing!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.breeahern.com
• Instagram: @bree.ahern
• Other: https://www.thumbtack.com/tx/fort-worth/cello-lessons/bree-ahern-cello-teacher/service/410207093746745357

Image Credits
Natalie Gaynor Photography, Melissa Taylor Photography, George Heathco, and Douglas DeVries.