Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rose Crelli. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Rose, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
The biggest risk I ever took was moving to San Francisco in August 2020. It’s been exactly 4 years since I first drove into the city, with my entire life packed up into my Toyota RAV4. I had never been to San Francisco before, and only knew one person. I had rented my tiny room sight unseen, and had no job, besides flying back to Huntsville Alabama to perform with the symphony. The nanny gig I had lined up before moving had fallen through and the mom had messaged me part way through my solo road trip from Kentucky to California that they no longer needed my services. I had no idea what awaited me, but I knew that I was excited for a new adventure. A few days within moving, I had found a job working as a nanny for a different family, and I offered to teach their son violin, piano and drum kit lessons as well. I worked for them for 5 months, making $800 a week. Then, I took another risk. I quit my nanny job, and committed myself full time to making it as a violin performer and teacher in the city. I built my website, designed flyers, business cards, and a Yelp business page. I spent 3 whole days walking around my neighborhood pinning up violin teaching posters on every available surface. I began to grew my violin teaching studio, and I was teaching outdoors in Precita Park, braving the elements of wind and cold to teach my violin lessons in COVID risk adverse environments. My first solo performing gig of modern Top 40 violin covers was actually on the trending chatroom app Clubhouse. I had an internal voice urging me to be brave, and start offering to perform my violin for people. That’s when my Instagram following started to grow. I had always loved transcribing R&B, and popular songs on the radio to violin, but I had no idea that I could actually make a living off of that. From those Clubhouse performances, I got invited to perform over Zoom for a business conference. From that Zoom performance, I got hired to perform for one of the employee’s 25 year wedding anniversary over FaceTime. That’s when I realized that I could actually do this. My next risk was a financial one, investing in buying a Bose S1Pro speaker, which cost about $700, to bring to my performances and play my instrumental backing tracks off of. The following risk, that once taken, considerably payed itself off, was investing in my very first electric violin, a Ned Steinberger NXTA. As soon as I bought my electric violin, my bookings immediately increased. I find that in retrospect, those key decisions that were scary at first, because the outcome wasn’t guaranteed, were incredibly instrumental in moving my career into the next stage. Now, I’ve performed halftime for the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center (they discovered me through a hashtag I used on one of my Instagram reels), to performing for Rolls-Royce, the San Francisco Giants and corporations including Meta, PayPal, Salesforce and Open AI.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As an adoptee from China, I often find myself searching for deeper meanings, and reasonings throughout my life to help me understand my journey & life’s purpose. This manifests the most in my career as a performing musician. I love my job, I love connecting with people through music, and it gives me so much joy to think about how I can help make the world a better place through my music. I am a professional violinist living in San Francisco, and I perform for a wide variety of events, whether for weddings, corporate events, or half time and national anthem performances for the Golden State Warriors or San Francisco Giants. It makes me emotional, reflecting on how I get to be a part of someone’s special celebration and most memorable day of their life, whether it’s a wedding ceremony or proposal. I have so much fun being able to orchestrate the energy of a room & crowd of people, and getting people singing, dancing, and smiling along with the music makes me so happy. Using music to help fundraise and raise awareness for causes that I care about also fulfills me, and I’ve organized two successful online and in person fundraising benefit concerts & auctions. I produce an annual Valentine’s Day concert, and always make sure to collaborate and feature singers, guitarists and even dancers.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being able to take a concept and idea from your imagination, and manifesting it into reality is so rewarding! It’s incredible getting to work with other artists as well. I recently produced a music video for a new music release of mine, VALKYRIES, and I hired a team of dancers, choreographer, makeup artist, videographer, and photographer. Working with everyone and communicating my vision, and then, in the end, trusting in everyone’s expertise was such a rewarding experience that taught me so much. I remember immediately after the shoot, feeling scared and discouraged, not trusting myself, and worrying about how it would turn out. However, the final product turned out even better than I could have imagined! When it came to sharing it with the world, there was definitely a feeling of vulnerability, but the feedback and response was so heartwarming and reassuring! Self doubt is the killer of so many dreams, so learning how to ignore that, and trusting and believing in yourself, and in others pays off.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I’ve had to unlearn the unrealistic expectation of perfection, and of “waiting for the perfect time when I’m ‘ready.’” Both of these limited ideas are intertwined and related to one another. They are detrimental to growth because they inhibit our inclination towards risk, and are a creative’s worst enemy. The biggest risks often offer the highest reward, but you have to push through the initial barrier of self doubt that lies between something new and something old. As a classically trained violinist, the standard of perfection, and the tradition of always deferring to a professor or a violin teacher as holding the ultimate opinion and final say ingrained in me a sense of distrusting myself and needing to outsource and seek someone else’s opinion and approval. It is so important to learn from experts, and the learning process is lifelong, but after a certain point, you have to learn to trust your years of training, and yourself. For many classical musicians, they secure their career and income auditioning for orchestras. The orchestra audition route is long, grueling, expensive, and often soul crushing with your sense of self worth & worth as a musician being at the mercy and discretion of a hidden audition panel of judges. Breaking out of that world, and starting out my own business as a self employed musician was an eye opening experience when I realized that instead of relying on other people to give me a job, I could create my own. Being in an environment where I set the rules, and thus, where anything is possible, was so empowering, scary yet liberating. The perfect time doesn’t exist, and we hinder ourselves when we hold back and tell ourselves that we are not ready yet, continually waiting and postponing our potential. At a certain time you have to take the leap. When I first moved to San Francisco, I only knew 1 person, and I was working as a nanny, and teaching the oldest kid I was nannying piano, violin and drum lessons. After 5 months, I quit my nanny job, and threw myself 110% into owning my own business as a violin teacher and performer. It was terrifying leaving my job with a guaranteed income, but this fear was also the perfect fire to keep me hustling and working fast. I started out primarily as a violin teacher, teaching students outdoors at a nearby park, braving the elements of wind and cold. I built my website, YouTube, Yelp business page, designed flyers, business cards, and started performing. My first paid performance was on Zoom for a business conference, and then one of the employees hired me to perform on Zoom for his and his wife’s 25th wedding anniversary. Now I’m averaging 25 performances a month, have over 130 five star reviews for my Google business, and have my dream, one bedroom apartment in San Francisco.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rosecrelliviolin.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frozenfiddlerose/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoseCrelliViolin
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rose-crelli-7968a1204/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rosecrelliviolin
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rose-crelli-violin-san-francisco#reviews
