We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leilehua Lanzilotti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leilehua below.

Alright, Leilehua thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I am a full-time artist, and I have a for-profit business model under the name Every Morning We Rise LLC.

For the past five years I have been doing something I call “100 Acts of Believing in Yourself.”

It all started at the end of 2020 when I heard from an older composer that the only way to make a living was to “apply to 100 things” every year. Hearing this, I thought—there is no way there are 100 things that I could apply for—and also—I have to do this.

Finding the 100 things was less tricky than I thought: organizations like Creative Capital have open access grant listings that are updated monthly, while other organizations like Foundation for Contemporary Arts offer Emergency Grants to Artists on a rolling basis. But to apply for 100, I had to sort through at least three times that many to see what I was eligible for.

About halfway through the year, I started to realize it wasn’t just the applications or pitches, though. It was the way they made me believe in my vision for projects. Honing that vision, writing about it weekly, revising, connecting with partners, brainstorming with collaborators, booking recording time—all these things were acts of believing in myself. Many of the opportunities were things I didn’t get. However, some of them were successful! These opportunities also connect me to a community that will hold me accountable for a new vision of the way I want to work.

As things continue to change, these acts of believing in yourself can shift—after all, the belief and the hope is in you, not in the external outcome. Facing rejection, facing cancellations, all seem a lot less important with quiet calm and small acts of believing in yourself.

Now five years in, when I give talks on this process I try to remind people:
1) I get rejected from 90% of these opportunities—that’s more than 90 No’s a year.
2) I try to have a good attitude about it, but it’s still difficult when the big ones don’t come through.
3) Believing in Yourself means believing in your community of practice, and that means celebrating your community’s wins when they get something you donʻt.
4) I have no interest in being a full-time grant writer / coach…
5) …so that means taking breaks where I focus on artistic work or focus on being in community.

Leilehua, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a composer, multimedia artist, and curator whose works often explore dramatic expanses of color and timbre. By world-building through multimedia installation works and nontraditional concert experiences/musical interventions, my works activate imagination around new paths forward in language sovereignty, water sovereignty, land stewardship, and respect. Uplifting others by crafting projects that support both local communities and economy, the work inspires hope to continue.

Some things I am proud of are: being honored as a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music for “with eyes the color of time” (string orchestra), which the Pulitzer committee called, “a vibrant composition . . . that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism;” recognition as a 2025 USA Fellow; and distinguished residencies such as The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. As a recording artist, I’ve played on albums from Björk’s “Vulnicura Live” and Joan Osborne’s “Love and Hate,” to David Lang’s “anatomy theater.”

My company, Every Morning We Rise, covers a series of products that engage thoughtfully with the contemporary world through the arts: primarily new musical works available for commission, consumption through listening, or consumption as a score to perform. In creating new work, I also build and develop projects in a deep meaningful way, including community engagement at the heart of projects from conception.

My primary customers are Cultural Investors who are interested in achieving solidarity and association with excellence. They want to create concert environments that people want to come to, they want to be “in the know” about contemporary art, and they want clients to come to them with trend questions. The pain points they face are difficulty in finding materials, difficulty feeling connected to the work, and difficulty creating social impact in the other work that they do.

My product, or my artwork, benefits the customer (in this case, Cultural Investors) by giving them access to high profile artists and performers, giving them insider information before it is publicly announced, and having clear and sharp looking web materials so it is easy for them to engage with future projects. It helps them demonstrate excellence in their solidarities.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Stepping back, my vision is to uplift indigenous contemporaneity—through thoughtful engagement with scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge. I redistribute resources of funding through my project planning to indigenous women and nonbinary artists, and create thoughtful partnerships between climate scientists and indigenous artists. For other indigenous young people, and for our community, to create greater awareness of environmental impact on issues of clean water and changes in ocean temperature for example, helps engage audiences and give them an emotional reaction to a very urgent environmental or social issue that impacts our communities.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Business Model Generation & Value Proposition Design are important tools that have influenced the way I think about connecting value / mission through every part of my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://leilehualanzilotti.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annezilotti/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilehua

Image Credits

Gahlord Dewald, stills from “Ahupuaʻa” co-directed by Lanzilotti and Kevin Eikenberg, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Leilehua Lanzilotti