#1 - The Journey Begins, Becoming a Freelancer

My name is Ragnhild Wesenberg and I am a cellist and freelancing musician,

or so I'd like to call myself, you see- It was only a month ago that I quit my regular job (which was to clean flats) and decided to spend my time and energy on anything related to becoming a freelance cellist.

This has really exploded into a whole new world for me; it turns out that there are thousands of things that are related to this career. I have become incredibly fascinated by all of these things and I want to share this journey with others who are in a similar situation. In the beginning of this year I came home from work, and for some reason I started to cry and felt exhausted, despite having had an enjoyable workday. Sitting on the sofa I felt apathetic and couldn't find any words to communicate to my boyfriend what the problem was. This was a turning point.

Up until this point I hadn't been working as a cellist but instead chosen the comfort of having a regular job where I would receive my salary every month and not having to deal much with taxes, while having my cello-playing on the side and thinking that I would gradually find cello-related work and then phase out my regular job. But this turned out to be too much. I didn't have the energy to do all these things simultaneously. So five and a half years after graduating as a cellist and cello teacher I realised it was time to actually put my abilities into practice.

Since that day, I've been diving into topics like establishing a private teaching practice, researching if there are institutes that are in need of cello teachers, searching online for string players and ensembles to try to get an idea of how the scene looks like in this city where I don't have a professional network, making a website, a LinkedIn profile, an Instagram account, a Facebook page, dipping a toe into Ableton Live, video editing, how to get good audio quality for my cello if I'm playing via Zoom, what to do as self-employed and do the right things concerning taxes, developing everyday routines to make sure I don't miss any messages from anyone trying to get in touch with me (which I learned the hard way) and on top of it all remember to actually improve my own cello-playing, to move my body and occasionally take a break despite the feeling of always having something undone.

Going through this process myself made me suddenly incredibly curious about how other musicians have experienced this in their own way, how they found their path, which income streams they have, which challenges they've faced, which lessons they've learned, how they structure their days, if they have time to actually play their instrument, how they view the value or lack thereof of social media, and good old existential questions like what it means to be a musician, and aren't all humans musicians?

I was born and raised in Norway. When I was nine years old my mum accepted my failure to learn the piano, and she suggested the cello instead, which I didn't know what was but I agreed nevertheless. In my teens I knew that music was the only topic I had an interest in studying, and I went first to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, then to the conservatory in Amsterdam, and finally I took a year of music pedagogy in Tromsø in the north of Norway.

But while many choose to go straight into working as a musician after music studies, I chose instead to move to the arctic, and I spent a couple of years in a small Norwegian town almost as far north as one can get without leaving the mainland. I enjoyed my existence as an undercover cellist while earning money from working in a nursing home, being surrounded by mountains and the sea and feeling wonderfully far from ‘the World’. And even when I moved to Stockholm it took a couple of years before thinking about earning my living as a cellist, and yet another half year before actually taking the plunge.

So here I am, during Spring in Stockholm, with the unpredictability of the whole covid situation which has now been here for a year, and with intense enthusiasm about my sudden change of reality, a feeling of seizing the day and wanting to do even more of what makes my life meaningful, which is to play music and to share my thoughts and experiences with those who can take an interest in it or feel inspired by it.

I'll share with you what I've done so far in order to get the ball rolling, and I'd really love to hear from you if you have more suggestions of what I can do, just email me at ragnhild@wesenberg.org and if I take your suggestion I'll let you know how it went.

So, in a fairly short period of time I've done the following:

-emailed all the funeral agency offices I could find in Stockholm, which until now adds up to nearly 70 offices, from which I received some positive replies, including one who recommended I get in touch with someone who runs a small business providing music for funerals, and I wrote him and he is now at least aware of my existence.

-I've also put out an ad as a cello teacher which I've received interest in and I have a few potential students I'll give a first lesson for free to see if we get along with each other, and hopefully some of them will choose to continue.

-I've contacted a few music schools, so they are also aware of my existence.

-Since I don't know any musicians here I've been researching online to see what musicians here are involved in, and I found a string player pool and wrote them, received a positive reply, and I took note of some of the musicians and looked them up on the internet.

-which led me to follow some of them on instagram, and I've just started to actually interact with them. I have a poor stamina when it comes to social media but when I plan my day I have started to include a post called "interact with at least one person today", and that helps.

-I also posted an ad in a facebook group for musicians in Stockholm, including on the facebook marketplace, and I've received lots of messages! It's really fun to put something out and see what comes back to me, so the messages I received were mostly useless, like - someone writing that they want to make a project and might want to include cello in it, and that's not something I want to get into really - I want to spend my time more efficiently, so hoping for messages saying there is a specific idea, a plan, for a song or a whole project, something I can relate to straight away, and this happens occasionally but these are not the usual ones.

-I've made business cards by hand, because I'm a big fan of easy, low-budget solutions with a personal touch, that I just keep in the pocket of my phone cover for times when I'm approached by someone who's interested in taking cello lessons.

I am aware that having a professional network is super important and that it might seem a little strange that I'm starting to build it now when almost everything is happening online. But I have a rebel in me who really wants to do what I can with what I have. So I've played some improvised cello music in a yoga class via zoom, and given a private lunchtime concert for an old woman in her own flat, which was the first offline concert she had attended in over a year.

Now that people are home a lot, there seems to be a strong interest in learning to play an instrument, and a friend of mine said that she has received a lot more messages from people wanting to learn how to play the cello than usual. This might not be such a badly chosen time after all. When being deprived of something we've been taking for granted, such as attending concerts, we appreciate it even more.

So that was a summary of what I've done up until now. If you have a comment or recommendation for how I can proceed, feel free to get in touch!

Soundtrack performed and recorded by Mohamed Amer.

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